whether he should go back and spend the night in one of the two kindly-looking inns of the latter place or push on over the South Downs towards the unknown luck of Singleton or Chichester.  As he sat down two big retrievers, black and brown, came headlong down the road.  The black carried a stick, the brown disputed and pursued.  As they came abreast of him the foremost a little relaxed his hold, the pursuer grabbed at it, and in an instant the rivalry had flared to rage and a first-class dogfight was in progress.

Benham detested dog-fights.  He stood up, pale and distressed.  “Lie down!” he cried.  “Shut up, you brutes!” and was at a loss for further action.

Then it was Amanda leapt into his world, a light, tall figure of a girl, fluttering a short petticoat.  Hatless she was, brown, flushed, and her dark hair tossing loose, and in a moment she had the snarling furious dogs apart, each gripped firmly by its collar.  Then with a wriggle black was loose and had closed again.  Inspired by the best traditions of chivalry Benham came to her assistance.  He was not expert with dogs.  He grasped the black dog under its ear.  He was bitten in the wrist, rather in excitement than malice, and with a certain excess of zeal he was strangling the brute before you could count ten.

Amanda seized the fallen stick and whacked the dog she held, reasonably but effectively until its yelps satisfied her.  “There!” she said pitching her victim from her, and stood erect again.  She surveyed the proceedings of her helper for the first time.

“You needn’t,” she said, “choke Sultan anymore.”

“Ugh!” she said, as though that was enough for Sultan.  And peace was restored.

“I’m obliged to you.  But—­ . . .  I say!  He didn’t bite you, did he?  Oh, Sultan!”

Sultan tried to express his disgust at the affair.  Rotten business.  When a fellow is fighting one can’t be meticulous.  And if people come interfering.  Still—­sorry!  So Sultan by his code of eye and tail.

“May I see? . . .  Something ought to be done to this. . . .”

She took his wrist in her hand, and her cheek and eyelashes came within a foot of his face.

Some observant element in his composition guessed, and guessed quite accurately, that she was nineteen. . . .

2

She had an eyebrow like a quick stroke of a camel’s-hair brush, she had a glowing face, half childish imp, half woman, she had honest hazel eyes, a voice all music, a manifest decision of character.  And he must have this bite seen to at once.  She lived not five minutes away.  He must come with her.