Chapter Thirty One.
They reached Pretoria shortly after nine. Dare drove with Pamela to the Grand Hotel where he engaged rooms. They breakfasted together at a small table in the public room. A rather silent meal it proved; Pamela was tired, and somewhat depressed now that they were arrived at their destination; the fatigue of the long journey told upon her; and her eyes were heavy, the result of insufficient rest.
All the glamour was ended; the pleasurable excitement, the sense of adventure, of happy forgetfulness, was as a dream of the night which the daylight dispelled utterly, leaving only a vague regret of glowing memories dimly recalled and greatly missed. She felt as a woman might feel who had been pleasantly drugged and wakes painfully in a bleak, unlovely world.
Dare prescribed a warm bath and bed. She could do nothing that morning. He would see her again at the lunch hour, when she was rested, and tell her what arrangements he had been able to make in the interval.
She acquiesced silently, too weary and depressed to care whether she saw Arnott that day or the next. Now that the meeting loomed so imminent all her courage was oozing away. She realised with a sense of horror at herself that she shrank almost with repulsion from the thought of standing beside the sick bed of the man she once had loved, for whom she now felt nothing but a cold resentment, a bitter anger for the evil part he had played in her life. She did not desire to see him. But the reason which had led her to him governed her still. Her future course was none the less plain because it was difficult to follow.
The much needed rest brought with its refreshment a greater tranquillity of mind; and when she met Dare at luncheon she was herself again, quiet and composed, a little nervous obviously, but equal to facing the ordeal when the moment for doing so arrived.
She was relieved to hear that she was not expected to visit the invalid until the following morning. She might not, Dare informed her, see him even then. It depended entirely upon how he received the news of her presence whether she was admitted to his room. He was making good progress, and the doctors had no wish to retard his recovery by risking the excitement of an emotional scene.
“I have vouched for your absolute discretion,” he said, meeting the wistful eyes with a reassuring smile. “I don’t fancy you are the sort of woman who indulges in scenes.”