She saw that she had jarred on him.  But an odd jealousy—­or perhaps her hidden disappointment—­drove her on.

‘Yes, but one doesn’t like strangers interfering,’ she said childishly.

The soldier threw her a side-glance, while his lip twitched a little.  So this was Pamela—­grown-up.  She seemed to him rather foolish—­and very lovely.  There was no doubt about that!  She was going to be a beauty, and of a remarkable type.  He himself was a strong, high-minded, capable fellow, with an instinctive interest in women, and a natural aptitude for making friends with them.  He was inclined, always, to try and set them in the right way; to help them to some of the mental training which men got in a hundred ways, and women, as it seemed to him, were often so deplorably without.  But this schoolmaster function only attracted him when there was opposition.  He had been quite sincere in denouncing humility in women.  It never failed to warn him off.

‘Do you think she really wants to interfere?’ he asked, smiling.  ’I expect it’s only that she’s got a bit of an organizing gift—­like the women who have been doing such fine things in the war.’

‘There’s no chance for me to do fine things in the war,’ said Pamela bitterly.

’Take up the land, and see!  Suppose you and Miss Bremerton could pull the estate together!’

Pamela’s eyes scoffed.

‘Father would never let me.  No, I think sometimes I shall run away!’

He lifted his eyebrows, and she was annoyed with him for taking her remark as mere bluff.

‘You’ll see,’ she insisted.  ‘I shall do something desperate.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ he said, quietly.  ’Make friends with Miss Bremerton and help her.’

‘I don’t like her enough,’ she said, drawing quick breath.

He saw now she was in a mood to quarrel with him outright.  But he didn’t mean to let her.  With those eyes—­in such a fire—­she was really splendid.  How she had come on!

‘I’m sorry,’ he said mildly.  ’Because, you know—­if you don’t mind my saying so—­it’ll really take the two of you to keep your father out of gaol.  The Government’s absolutely determined about this thing—­they can’t afford to be anything else. We’re being hammered, and gassed, and blown to pieces over there’—­he pointed eastward.  ’It’s the least the people over here can do—­to play up—­isn’t it?’ Then he laughed.  ’But I mustn’t be setting you against your father.  I didn’t mean to.’

Pamela shrugged her shoulders, in silence.  She really longed to ask him about his wound, his staff work, a thousand things; but they didn’t seem, somehow, to be intimate enough, to be hitting it off enough.  This meeting, which had been to her a point of romance in the distance, was turning out to be just nothing—­only disappointment.  She was glad to see how quickly the other pair were coming towards them, and at the same time bitterly vexed that her tete-a-tete with Arthur was at an end.