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“Your mother,” returned Julian deliberately, “will not be put to the trouble. Phil isn’t going with you tomorrow.” This announcement fell into a silence. Tome’s eyes, burning with angry dismay, flashed from Julian’s cold expressionlessness to Phil’s momentary smile of bewilderment. The other men appeared surprised and interested, though Roger scowled.

Matt said smoothly: “You see, Tome, our friend Caswell takes his duties hard. He doesn’t much care for the idea of Phil being exposed to the attentions of so many handsome Spaniards and Portuguese. Maybe her visit would be best left over till later, when your father’s guests have departed. See?”

“Yes, I see. I see very plainly,” came the rapid reply. “We are Portuguese — not good enough, in Senhor Caswell’s opinion, to have contact with the English girl whom he has annexed as a ward.” Blazing with humiliation, he sprang up. “This island is Portuguese, senhor. You do not mind earning your miserable salary from our soil. I will get my father to write to your company and tell them of the contempt you have for us—”

“I have no difference with the Novada,” Julian cut in, “Phil will tell you herself that, owing to a clause in her father’s will, marriage will be out of the question for a very long time. She is planning to leave the island within a couple of months.”

Violently Tome twisted towards her. “Is this true, senhorita?”

“Yes,” she said, low-voiced. “Quite true.”

Tome pulled himself upright, shoulders erect. His throat worked. “If you were of my race I would challenge you, senhor, but you are English and afraid to fight except with your tongue!”

Without haste Julian stood up, dwarfing the excitable creature. “You have not yet acquired the polish of your father, Tome. He dislikes me, but he is a gentleman about it. Perhaps you had better sleep in the yacht tonight. I will send a boy down with your things.”

Tome had flushed darkly. Jerkily he bowed to Phil and then again in Matt’s direction.

‘Tomorrow early, senhors. Good night!”

While his footsteps still echoed, Julian poured a whisky and pushed it towards Matt.

“Hot-headed young cub,” remarked the trader, accepting the glass and peering through it. “He needed the lesson, but I don’t know that it’s wise to make enemies of the Astartes. Phil could have managed him.”

“Perhaps, but it’s safer for her to do as she’s told. She’s becoming a hell of a pest.”

Phil swallowed. She got to her feet and forced a tremulous smile. “I’ve no defence to offer. Good night, everyone.” And she turned and ran out into a cloud of scissor-winged flies which plagued the clearing.

In her room she ignored the tears that sped down her cheeks and lit a cigarette. Pacing between the curtained window and the door, she felt the wounded thud of her heart beneath her folded arms and a weight of grief behind her eyes.

She heard Matt’s car start up and told herself it was late, but shrank from the thought of a wide-eyed night within the mosquito net. There was no getting away from Julian’s cruelty and in bed she would be alone with it, whereas here in the dimly lit room she had the company of insects and the somnolent lizard in the comer.

A tap at the door swung her round. Something leapt convulsively against her ribs. As he came in and closed the door, Julian’s face was set. For a moment he paused, his hands dug into his pockets, and then his jaw loosened and took on a hint of gentleness.

“I saw your light,” he said. “Why aren’t you in bed?”

“Sleep doesn’t come easily here at the best of times,” she replied. “After a scene like this evening, it’s more elusive than ever.”

“I know. That was a filthy crack I made.”

“I’m used to your filthy cracks, but not in front of others. It. . . rankled.”

“The young Romeo annoyed me—his father can make plenty of trouble if he likes.” His voice dropped. “I get no pleasure from hurting you, but the way we are, it’s inevitable."

To evade his baffling stare she reached to increase the lamplight. Her head inclined in agreement.

“Yes, I don’t believe I realized that till tonight. I . . . I’ve decided to leave Valeira as soon as possible, Julian.”

His answer was so long in coming that she was impelled to look at him. His eyes had darkened and a hand came up to rasp his chin.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll make the arrangements. You can go to some people I know in Lagos till your lawyer writes. We’ll go into details tomorrow. You won’t have a thing to worry about.” He spoke with unaccustomed thickness. “It’ll take courage to start a new life, but you have plenty, and I’ll always help you in any way I can.”

She murmured a husky, “Thanks.”

Julian should have gone then, snapping the door and striding home with his habitual decisiveness. But he hesitated and Phil could strangle the pain no longer. It brimmed in her eyes and forced a gasp from her lungs. Swept on an irresistible wave, she groped towards him. She was shaking as she leaned close to him, yet nerved for the rebuff that would shatter the intimate quality of this moment with the tearing speed of a bayonet thrust.

She was scarcely aware that his whole body had stiffened before she felt his hands slide up to her shoulders and pull her tight into his arms. She saw glittering eyes and flaring nostrils, felt his heart pounding deeply and angrily against her, and then the brutal pressure of his mouth upon her own.

A minute later he was pushing her away from him, his face drained white with fury.

“Blast you!" he breathed. “You’re like the rest of women —without conscience or loyalty. Isn’t it enough to have Crawford and the Portuguese wanting to sleep with you?”

“That’s . . . horrible.”

“No more horrible than the rest of torrid nature. Get away from the door.”

Mechanically she obeyed.

He kicked the door wide, admitting a burst of primitive scents. And then he was gone, and Phil was left standing with closed eyes and fingers laid over lips which still throbbed from the savage contact with Julian’s.

MATT returned after only two days at the Novada. His excuse was a surfeit of pimento and Portuguese wine, but Phil suspected a last-minute suggestion from Julian.

In his store near the waterfront, Matt sat back and smoked while he described to her the wedding feast and the bride.

“A nice little thing, but no spirit,” he said. “Not like the old senhora, which, perhaps, is as well. No room for two viragos under one roof.”

Phil smiled faintly and said: “Did you see the bullfight?”

“I did. It wasn’t so much a fight as a scramble for the flowers that the ladies threw. Very weak.” He paused, inspected the tip of his cheroot and shifted his feet from a bag of meal to a pile of sacks. The old chair creaked and split a reed. Matt frowned. “Julian was right again, lovey. You were best off here. Even Drew got tight each evening.”

“Oh, dear. And Roger?”

“He was merry, too. Roger’s popular with Rodrigo and it wasn’t pleasant to see them leaning tipsy heads together. Can’t think what’s come over the fellow.”

“It’s the heat and monotony,” said Phil. “Anything for a change. I feel that way myself.”

“I reckon there’ll be a change soon for a few of us,” Matt remarked moodily. “A couple of seamen were in the shop early this morning offering to pass me some drugs. I kicked ’em out, but they’ll unload the stuff through someone else.”

“They’re smuggling again? Does Julian know?”

“Probably, but he’s too tied up to interfere. You can bet he’ll stamp on it as soon as the others are back in the shafts. He ought to engage more overseers, but he won’t, because it would entail an increase in overheads and a drop in bonus. He’s a maniac.”

Which was not a word Phil would have used to describe Julian.

During the last three days she had avoided him. She knew his habits; that he went down to the lagoon for his bathe before breakfast and set out for the plantation soon after seven, returning at twelve-thirty for lunch; at two he drove off again or spent some time in the sheds. The sky had shadowed when he garaged the car for the night. Whereas previously she might have made a purposely accidental appearance in her garden and hailed him, she now kept to the cabin, hourly expecting a note to the effect that her passage had been arranged. She had a conviction that however his work pressed, Julian would not forget that detail.

Yet the days passed without word from him. Drew ambled down the mountainside on a donkey and stiffly dismounted at the gate of his cement house. His complexion was yellow, his gait unsteady with internal disquiet. Roger, Phil heard, was stretching his holiday to a full week. She could only guess at Julian’s battened rage and hope that Roger would be suitably abject when he did come back.

As it happened, she was on the jetty when a yacht bound for Lisbon anchored in the bay and lowered a boat to take off a passenger. Full of admiration for the blue and silver vessel, she watched the manoeuvre and the approach of the dinghy to the quay. Immediately after Roger and his valise were disembarked the boat sped back across the water. Roger let a boy take his case, and he joined Phil.

“How nice to be met,” he said with the trace of a sneer, “if only by chance. Do I look as bad as that?”

“As what?”

“Your shrug of distaste. If I carry signs of dissipation and smell of scent and cigars, you’re to blame.”

“You sound in poisonous mood,” she said lightly. “I suspect contrition.”

“You’re way out. My better self doesn’t work any more. You killed it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She laughed to cover uneasiness, and walked in front till they reached the road.

As they came level again he twitched the short sleeve of her shirt. “Why didn’t you tell me months ago, when I started pestering you to marry me, about that clause in your father’s will?"

“I wasn’t aware of it then.”

“Caswell seems to have been well informed for some time.”

“Only four or five weeks. Roger, there isn’t the least need for us to quarrel. We can go on being friends.”

“Keep your friendship. I don’t want to see you or live anywhere near you. I’ve heard too much about you.”

He was behaving so strangely that she made no attempt to construe his meaning. She tried a smile, to which he returned a vindictive curl of the lips, and was about to turn towards Matt’s store when Roger stopped, his expression fixed, and a weakness in her knees told her that Julian was at her back.

“Well, Crawford?” came the harsh enquiry.

Phil stepped to one side. “I’ll go.”

“No,” exclaimed Roger. “You needn’t bother to walk out so that the small boy may have his beating in private. Awfully sporting of you, but unnecessary. Go ahead, Mr. Caswell!”

“Are you mad, or just a fool? Do you realize that two cargo boats have been held up while you caroused at the Novada? Why didn’t you return with Drew?”

“Because,” replied Roger, in a deliberate, mincing tone which sent snakes along Phil’s spine, “I fell among friends and enjoyed the change. I would have hung on there longer but I had to have more clothes. How do you like that?” Tightly controlled, Julian said: “Astartes has been suggesting to you that you’re underpaid and overworked. He’s made you believe that your services are indispensable--"

“He’s told me other things, too!” Roger was almost shrill. “I know why you made Phil live in the plantation buildings. You’re a fine one to preach celibacy, Mr. Mighty Caswell ”

“You’re drunk”—Julian’s voice was dangerously quiet— “or I’d twist your neck; Go sleep it off and come to my house later.”

“So that you can fire me from behind an office desk? No, thanks. I’ll fire myself right now. You can find someone else to take the kicks. I’m through.”

Phil cried: “Roger, you can’t! You don’t know what you’re saying.”

But Julian cut in: “He knows all right. This isn’t a sudden decision, is it, Crawford? You’ve had it under your hat a long time. If you walk out now the company will demand three months’ salary and confiscate the year’s bonus. You get that?”

“They can do what they damn well please,” he shouted in childish anger. “I’m going to the Novada for two thousand a year—that’s a salary as big as yours, you supercilious devil....”

Phil heard the crack of a fist, saw the wild glare in Roger’s eyes before he toppled, and felt Julian’s rough push at her back.

“Leave him,” he said abruptly. “I’ll call and ask Matt to take him home.”

Slowly she clambered up the rutted slope to the plantation track. A clot had gathered in her throat and seemed to disperse and flood her with anguish. These days, life had nothing to offer but disillusion and pain. Had she obeyed Julian’s first command to leave Valeira, Clin Dakers need not have died, and Roger would have finished his time content in the assurance of a fairly substantial bank balance and an affectionate reunion with his family. Above all, Julian would not now be embittered by her invasion of his privacy, nor hating her for the predicament into which Roger’s resignation had plunged the plantation. As if fate had decided at this juncture to co-operate, next morning Julian sent over a letter which had come up with his mail. It was addressed to “Mrs. Julian Caswell”, with the “Mrs.” converted by a stroke of the blue pencil to “Mr.” No doubt the post official had enjoyed what it deemed a typist’s error. The plantation manager with a wife! Ho, ho!

Phil held in her fingers the lawyer’s cheque for three hundred pounds, the key of release, and exile. Methodically, shutting her mind against grief, she made a list of her debts, and worked out how much would remain. At one-thirty, knowing Julian’s custom of smoking a cigarette on his veranda after lunch, she walked over to the house.

But today he had no time for leisure. She came upon him grinding out a cigarette with his heel, his sun-helmet in his hand.

She held out the cheque. “It’s come. I’d get Matt to change it, but for the name. I’m afraid it will have to be passed through your bank.”

He gave the cheque a quick perusal and slipped it into his pocket. “Want it now?”

“Fairly soon. I owe Matt quite a bit . . . and you.”

“You owe me nothing, and I’ll settle with Matt,” he answered flatly. “You’d better have fifty pounds cash and the rest put into an account. I’ll see to it the minute I’m free.”