PART III

[Illustration: Drawn by John Cassel.

"Where am I?" she gasped. "What--what

have you done with me?"]

The Way of an Eagle

By E.M. DELL

1911

CONTENTS

PART I

CHAPTER

I.--THE TRUST

II.--A SOLDIER'S DAUGHTER

III.--THE VICTIM OF TREACHERY

IV.--DESOLATION

V.--THE DEVIL IN THE WILDERNESS

VI.--WHEN STRONG MEN FAIL

VII.--THE COMING OF AN ARMY

PART II

VIII.--COMRADES

IX.--THE SCHOOL OF SORROW

X.--THE EAGLE SWOOPS

XI.--THE FIRST FLIGHT

XII.--THE MESSAGE

XIII.--THE VOICE OF A FRIEND

XIV.--THE POISON OF ADDERS

XV.--THE SUMMONS

XVI.--THE ORDEAL

PART III

XVII.--An Old Friend

XVIII.--The Explanation

XIX.--A Hero Worshipper

XX.--News from the East

XXI.--A Harbour of Refuge

XXII.--An Old Story

XXIII.--The Sleep Called Death

XXIV.--The Creed of a Fighter

XXV.--A Scented Letter

XXVI.--The Eternal Flame

XXVII.--The Eagle Caged

XXVIII.--The Lion's Skin

XXIX.--Old Friends Meet

XXX.--An Offer of Friendship

XXXI.--The Eagle Hovers

PART IV

XXXII.--The Face in the Storm

XXXIII.--The Lifting of the Mask

XXXIV.--At the Gate of Death

XXXV.--The Armistice

XXXVI.--The Eagle Strikes

XXXVII. THE PENALTY FOR SENTIMENT

XXXVIII. THE WATCHER OF THE CLIFF

XXXIX. BY SINGLE COMBAT

XL. THE WOMAN'S CHOICE

XLI. THE EAGLE'S PREY

XLII. THE HARDEST FIGHT OF ALL

XLIII. REQUIESCAT

XLIV. LOVE'S PRISONER

PART V

XLV. THE VISION

XLVI. THE HEART OF A MAN

XLVII. IN THE NAME OF FRIENDSHIP

XLVIII. THE HEALING OF THE BREACH

XLIX. THE LOWERING OF THE FLAG

L. EREBUS

LI. THE BIRD OF PARADISE

LII. A WOMAN'S OFFERING

LIII. THE LAST SKIRMISH

LIV. SURRENDER

LV. OMNIA VINCIT AMOR

LVI. THE EAGLE SOARS

"There be three things which are too wonderful

for me, yea, four which I know not:

The way of an eagle in the air;

the way of a serpent upon a rock;

the way of a ship in the midst of the sea;

and the way of a man with a maid."

Proverbs xxx, 18-19.

THE WAY OF AN EAGLE

PART I

CHAPTER I

THE TRUST

The long clatter of an irregular volley of musketry rattled warningly

from the naked mountain ridges; over a great grey shoulder of rock

the sun sank in a splendid opal glow; from very near at hand came the

clatter of tin cups and the sound of a subdued British laugh. And in

the room of the Brigadier-General a man lifted his head from his hands

and stared upwards with unseeing, fixed eyes.

There was an impotent, crushed look about him as of one nearing the

end of his strength. The lips under the heavy grey moustache moved a

little as though they formed soundless words. He drew his breath once

or twice sharply through his teeth. Finally, with a curious groping

movement he reached out and struck a small hand-gong on the table in

front of him.

The door slid open instantly and an Indian soldier stood in the

opening. The Brigadier stared full at him for several seconds as if he

saw nothing, his lips still moving secretly, silently. Then suddenly,

with a stiff gesture, he spoke.

"Ask the major sahib and the two captain sahibs to come to me here."

The Indian saluted and vanished like a swift-moving shadow.

The Brigadier sank back into his chair, his head drooped forward, his

hands clenched. There was tragedy, hopeless and absolute, in every

line of him.

There came the careless clatter of spurred heels and loosely-slung

swords in the passage outside of the half-closed door, the sound of a

stumble, a short ejaculation, and again a smothered laugh.

"Confound you Grange! Why can't you keep your feet to yourself, you

ungainly Triton, and give us poor minnows a chance?"

The Brigadier sat upright with a jerk. It was growing rapidly dark.

"Come in, all of you," he said. "I have something to say. As well to

shut the door, Ratcliffe, though it is not a council of war."

"There being nothing left to discuss, sir," returned the voice that

had laughed. "It is just a simple case of sitting tight now till

Bassett comes round the corner."

The Brigadier glanced up at the speaker and caught the last glow of

the fading sunset reflected on his face. It was a clean-shaven face

that should have possessed a fair skin, but by reason of unfavourable

circumstances it was burnt to a deep yellow-brown. The features were

pinched and wrinkled--they might have belonged to a very old man; but

the eyes that smiled down into the Brigadier's were shrewd, bright,

monkey-like. They expressed a cheeriness almost grotesque. The two men

whom he had followed into the room stood silent among the shadows. The

gloom was such as could be felt.

Suddenly, in short, painful tones the Brigadier began to speak.

"Sit down," he said. "I have sent for you to ask one among you to

undertake for me a certain service which must be accomplished, but

which I--" he paused and again audibly caught his breath between his

teeth--"which I--am unable to execute for myself."

An instant's silence followed the halting speech. Then the young

officer who stood against the door stepped briskly forward.

"What's the job, sir? I'll wager my evening skilly I carry it

through."

One of the men in the shadows moved, and spoke in a repressive tone.

"Shut up, Nick! This is no mess-room joke."

Nick made a sharp, half-contemptuous gesture. "A joke only ceases

to be a joke when there is no one left to laugh, sir," he said. "We

haven't come to that at present."

He stood in front of the Brigadier for a moment--an insignificant

figure but for the perpetual suggestion of simmering activity that

pervaded him; then stepped behind the commanding officer's chair, and

there took up his stand without further words.

The Brigadier paid no attention to him. His mind was fixed upon one

subject only. Moreover, no one ever took Nick Ratcliffe seriously. It

seemed a moral impossibility.

"It is quite plain to me," he said heavily at length, "that the time

has come to face the situation. I do not speak for the discouragement

of you brave fellows. I know that I can rely upon each one of you to

do your duty to the utmost. But we are bound to look at things as they

are, and so prepare for the inevitable. I for one am firmly convinced

that General Bassett cannot possibly reach us in time."

He paused, but no one spoke. The man behind him was leaning forward,

listening intently.

He went on with an effort. "We are a mere handful. We have dwindled

to four white men among a host of dark. Relief is not even within a

remote distance of us, and we are already bordering upon starvation.

We may hold out for three days more. And then"--his breath came

suddenly short, but he forced himself to continue--"I have to think of

my child. She will be in your hands. I know you will all defend her to

the last ounce of your strength; but which of you"--a terrible gasping

checked his utterance for many labouring seconds; he put his hand over

his eyes--"which of you," he whispered at last, his words barely

audible, "will have the strength to--shoot her before your own last

moment comes?"

The question quivered through the quiet room as if wrung from the

twitching lips by sheer torture. It went out in silence--a dreadful,

lasting silence in which the souls of men, stripped naked of human

convention, stood confronting the first primaeval instinct of human

chivalry.

It continued through many terrible seconds--that silence, and through

it no one moved, no one seemed to breathe. It was as if a spell

had been cast upon the handful of Englishmen gathered there in the

deepening darkness.

The Brigadier sat bowed and motionless at the table, his head sunk in

his hands.

Suddenly there was a quiet movement behind him, and the spell was

broken. Ratcliffe stepped deliberately forward and spoke.

"General," he said quietly, "if you will put your daughter in my care,

I swear to you, so help me God, that no harm of any sort shall touch

her."

There was no hint of emotion in his voice, albeit the words were

strong; but it had a curious effect upon those who heard it. The

Brigadier raised his head sharply, and peered at him; and the other

two officers started as men suddenly stumbling at an unexpected

obstacle in a familiar road.

One of them, Major Marshall, spoke, briefly and irritably, with a

touch of contempt. His nerves were on edge in that atmosphere of

despair.

"You, Nick!" he said. "You are about the least reliable man in

the garrison. You can't be trusted to take even reasonable care of

yourself. Heaven only knows how it is you weren't killed long ago. It

was thanks to no discretion on your part. You don't know the meaning

of the word."

Nick did not answer, did not so much as seem to hear. He was standing

before the Brigadier. His eyes gleamed in his alert face--two weird

pin-points of light.

"She will be safe with me," he said, in a tone that held not the

smallest shade of uncertainty.

But the Brigadier did not speak. He still searched young Ratcliffe's

face as a man who views through field-glasses a region distant and

unexplored.

After a moment the officer who had remained silent throughout came

forward a step and spoke. He was a magnificent man with the physique

of a Hercules. He had remained on his feet, impassive but observant,

from the moment of his entrance. His voice had that soft quality

peculiar to some big men.

"I am ready to sell my life for Miss Roscoe's safety, sir," he said.

Nick Ratcliffe jerked his shoulders expressively, but said nothing. He

was waiting for the General to speak. As the latter rose slowly, with

evident effort, from his chair, he thrust out a hand, as if almost

instinctively offering help to one in sore need.

General Roscoe grasped it and spoke at last. He had regained his

self-command. "Let me understand you, Ratcliffe," he said. "You

suggest that I should place my daughter in your charge. But I must

know first how far you are prepared to go to ensure her safety."

He was answered instantly, with an unflinching promptitude he had

scarcely expected.

"I am prepared to go to the uttermost limit, sir," said Nicholas

Ratcliffe, his fingers closing like springs upon the hand that gripped

his, "if there is a limit. That is to say, I am ready to go through

hell for her. I am a straight shot, a cool shot, a dead shot. Will you

trust me?"

His voice throbbed with sudden feeling. General Roscoe was watching

him closely. "Can I trust you, Nick?" he said.

There was an instant's silence, and the two men in the background

were aware that something passed between them--a look or a rapid

sign--which they did not witness. Then reckless and debonair came

Nick's voice.

"I don't know, sir. But if I am untrustworthy, may I die to-night!"

General Roscoe laid his free hand upon the young man's shoulder.

"Is it so, Nick?" he said, and uttered a heavy sigh. "Well--so be it

then. I trust you."

"That settles it, sir," said Nick cheerily. "The job is mine."

He turned round with a certain arrogance of bearing, and walked to the

door. But there he stopped, looking back through the darkness at the

dim figures he had left.

"Perhaps you will tell Miss Roscoe that you have appointed me

deputy-governor," he said. "And tell her not to be frightened, sir.

Say I'm not such a bogey as I look, and that she will be perfectly

safe with me." His tone was half-serious, half-jocular. He wrenched

open the door not waiting for a reply.

"I must go back to the guns," he said, and the next moment was gone,

striding carelessly down the passage, and whistling a music-hall

ballad as he went.

CHAPTER II

A SOLDIER'S DAUGHTER

In the centre of the little frontier fort there was a room which one

and all of its defenders regarded as sacred. It was an insignificant

chamber, narrow as a prison cell and almost as bare; but it was the

safest place in the fort. In it General Roscoe's daughter--the only

white woman in the garrison--had dwelt safely since the beginning of

that dreadful siege.

Strictly forbidden by her father to stir from her refuge without

his express permission, she had dragged out the long days in close

captivity, living in the midst of nerve-shattering tumult but taking

no part therein. She was little more than a child, and accustomed

to render implicit obedience to the father she idolised, or she had

scarcely been persuaded to submit to this rigorous seclusion. It would

perhaps have been better for her physically and even mentally to

have gone out and seen the horrors which were being daily enacted all

around her. She had at first pleaded for at least a limited freedom,

urging that she might take her part in caring for the wounded. But her

father had refused this request with such decision that she had never

repeated it. And so she had seen nothing while hearing much, lying

through many sleepless nights with nerves strung to a pitch of torture

far more terrible than any bodily exhaustion, and vivid imagination

ever at work upon pictures more ghastly than even the ghastly reality

which she was not allowed to see.

The strain was such as no human frame could have endured for long.

Her strength was beginning to break down under it. The long sleepless

nights were more than she could bear. And there came a time when

Muriel Roscoe, driven to extremity, sought relief in a remedy from

which in her normal senses she would have turned in disgust.

It helped her, but it left its mark upon her--a mark which her father

must have noted, had he not been almost wholly occupied with the

burden that weighed him down. Morning and evening he visited her, yet

failed to read that in her haunted eyes which could not have escaped a

clearer vision.

Entering her room two hours after his interview with his officers

regarding her, he looked at her searchingly indeed, but without

understanding. She lay among cushions on a _charpoy_ of bamboo in

the light of a shaded lamp. Young and slight and angular, with a

pale little face of utter weariness, with great dark eyes that gazed

heavily out of the black shadows that ringed them round, such was

Muriel Roscoe. Her black hair was simply plaited and gathered up at

the neck. It lay in cloudy masses about her temples--wonderful hair,

quite lustreless, so abundant that it seemed almost too much for the

little head that bore it. She did not rise at her father's entrance.

She scarcely raised her eyes.

"So glad you've come, Daddy," she said, in a soft, low voice. "I've

been wanting you. It's nearly bedtime, isn't it?"

He went to her, treading lightly. His thoughts had been all of her for

the past few hours and in consequence he looked at her more critically

than usual. For the first time he was struck by her pallor, her look

of deathly weariness. On the table near her lay a plate of boiled rice

piled high in a snowy pyramid. He saw that it had not been touched.

"Why, child," he said, a sudden new anxiety at his heart "you have had

nothing to eat. You're not ill?"

She roused herself a little, and a very faint colour crept into her

white cheeks. "No, dear, only tired--too tired to be hungry," she told

him. "That rice is for you."

He sat down beside her with a sound that was almost a groan. "You must

eat something, child," he said. "Being penned up here takes away your

appetite. But all the same you must eat."

She sat up slowly, and pushed back the heavy hair from her forehead

with a sigh.

"Very well, Daddy," she said submissively. "But you must have some

too, dear. I couldn't possible eat it all."

Something in his attitude or expression seemed to strike her at this

point, and she made a determined effort to shake off her lethargy. A

spoon and fork lay by the plate. She handed him the former and kept

the latter for herself.

"We'll have a picnic, Daddy." she said, with a wistful little smile.

"I told _ayah_ always to bring two plates, but she has forgotten. We

don't mind, though, do we?"

It was childishly spoken, but the pathos of it went straight to the

man's heart. He tasted the rice under her watching eyes and pronounced

it very good; then waited for her to follow his example which she did

with a slight shudder.

"Delicious, Daddy, isn't it?" she said. And even he did not guess what

courage underlay the words.

They kept up the farce till the pyramid was somewhat reduced; then by

mutual consent they suffered their ardour to flag. There was a faint

colour in the girl's thin face as she leaned back again. Her eyes were

brighter, the lids drooped less.

"I had a dream last night, Daddy," she said, "such a curious dream,

and so vivid. I thought I was out on the mountains with some one. I

don't know who it was, but it was some one very nice. It seemed to be

very near the sunrise, for it was quite bright up above, though it was

almost dark where we stood. And, do you know--don't laugh, Daddy,

I know it was only a silly dream--when I looked up, I saw that

everywhere the mountains were full of horses and chariots of fire. I

felt so safe, Daddy, and so happy. I could have cried when I woke up."

She paused. It was rather difficult for her to make conversation for

the silent man who sat beside her so gloomy and preoccupied. Save that

she loved her father as she loved no one else on earth, she might have

felt awed in his presence.

As it was, receiving no response, she turned to look, and the next

instant was on her knees beside him, her thin young arms clinging to

his neck.

"Daddy, darling, darling!" she whispered, and hid her face against him

in sudden, nameless terror.

He clasped her to him, holding her close, that she might not again see

his face and the look it wore. She began to tremble, and he tried to

soothe her with his hand, but for many seconds he could find no words.

"What is it, Daddy?" she whispered at last, unable to endure the

silence longer. "Won't you tell me? I can be very brave. You said so

yourself."

"Yes," he said. "You will be a brave girl, I know." His voice quivered

and he paused to steady it. "Muriel," he said then, "I don't know if

you have ever thought of the end of all this. There will be an end,

you know. I have had to face it to-night."

She looked up at him quickly, but he was ready for her. He had

banished from his face the awful despair that he carried in his soul.

"When Sir Reginald Bassett comes--" she began uncertainly.

He put his hand on her shoulder. "You will try not to be afraid," he

said. "I am going to treat you, as I have treated my officers, with

absolute candour. We shall not hold out more than three days more. Sir

Reginald Bassett will not be here in time."

He stopped. Muriel uttered not a word. Her face was still upturned,

and her eyes had suddenly grown intensely bright, but he read no

shrinking in them.

With an effort he forced himself to go on. "I may not be able to

protect you when the end comes. I may not even be with you. But--there

is one man upon whom you can safely rely whatever happens, who will

give himself up to securing your safety alone. He has sworn to me that

you shall not be taken, and I know that he will keep his word. You

will be safe with him, Muriel. You may trust him as long as you live.

He will not fail you. Perhaps you can guess his name?"

He asked the question with a touch of curiosity in the midst of

his tragedy. That upturned, listening face had in it so little of a

woman's understanding, so much of the deep wonder of a child.

Her answer was prompt and confident, and albeit her very lips were

white, there was a faint hint of satisfaction in her voice as she made

it.

"Captain Grange, of course, Daddy."

He started and looked at her narrowly. "No, no!" he said. "Not Grange!

What should make you think of him?"

He saw a look of swift disappointment, almost of consternation, darken

her eyes. For the first time her lips quivered uncertainly.

"Who then, Daddy? Not--not Mr. Ratcliffe?"

He bent his head. "Yes, Nick Ratcliffe. I have placed you in his

charge. He will take care of you."

"Young Nick Ratcliffe!" she said slowly. "Why, Daddy, he can't even

take care of himself yet. Every one says so. Besides,"--a curiously

womanly touch crept into her speech--"I don't like him. Only the other

day I heard him laugh at something that was terrible--something it

makes me sick to think of. Indeed, Daddy, I would far rather have

Captain Grange to take care of me. Don't you think he would if you

asked him? He is so much bigger and stronger, and--and kinder."

"Ah! I know," her father said. "He seems so to you. But it is nerve

that your protector will need, child; and Ratcliffe possesses more

nerve than all the rest of the garrison put together. No, it must be

Ratcliffe, Muriel. And remember to give him all your trust, all your

confidence. For whatever he does will be with my authority--with

my--full--approval."

His voice failed suddenly and he rose, turning sharply away from the

light. She clung to his arm silently, in a passion of tenderness,

though she was far from understanding the suffering those last words

revealed. She had never seen him thus moved before.

After a few seconds he turned back to her, and bending kissed her

piteous face. She clung closely to him with an agonised longing to

keep him with her; but he put her gently from him at last.

"Lie down again, dear," he said, "and get what rest you can. Try not

to be frightened at the noise. There is sure to be an assault, but the

fort will hold to-night."

He stood a moment, looking down at her. Then again he stooped and

kissed her. "Good-bye, my darling," he said huskily, "till we meet

again!"

And so hurriedly, as if not trusting himself to remain longer, he left

her.

CHAPTER III

THE VICTIM OF TREACHERY

There came again the running rattle of rifle-firing from the valley

below the fort, and Muriel Roscoe, lying on her couch, pressed both

hands to her eyes and shivered. It seemed impossible that the end

could be so near. She felt as if she had existed for years in this

living nightmare of many horrors, had lain down and had slept with

that dreadful sound in her ears from the very beginning of things. The

life she had led before these ghastly happenings had become so vague a

memory that it almost seemed to belong to a previous existence, to an

earlier and a happier era. As in a dream she now recalled the vision

of her English school-life. It lay not a year behind her, but she felt

herself to have changed so fundamentally since those sunny, peaceful

days that she seemed to be a different person altogether. The Muriel

Roscoe of those days had been a merry, light-hearted personality. She

had revelled in games and all outdoor amusements. Moreover, she had

been quick to learn, and her lessons had never caused her any trouble.

A daring sprite she had been, with a most fertile imagination and a

longing for adventure that had never been fully satisfied, possessing

withal so tender and loving a heart that the very bees in the garden

had been among her cherished friends. She remembered all the sunny

ideals of that golden time and marvelled at herself, forgetting

utterly the eager, even passionate, craving that had then been hers

for the wider life, the broader knowledge, that lay beyond her reach,

forgetting the feverish impatience with which she had longed for

the day of her emancipation when she might join her father in the

wonderful glowing East which she so often pictured in her dreams. Of

her mother she had no memory. She had died at her birth. Her father

was all the world to her; and when at last he had travelled home on a

brief leave and taken her from her quiet English life to the strange,

swift existence of the land of his exile, her soul had overflowed with

happiness.

Nevertheless, she had not been carried away by the gaieties of this

new world. The fascinations of dance and gymkhana had not caught her.

The joy of being with her father was too sacred and too precious to be

foregone for these lesser pleasures, and she very speedily decided to

sacrifice all social entertainments to which he could not accompany

her. She rode with him, camped with him, and became his inseparable

companion. Undeveloped in many ways, shy in the presence of strangers,

she soon forgot her earlier ambition to see the world and all that it

contained. Her father's society was to her all-sufficing, and it was

no sacrifice to her to withdraw herself from the gay crowd and dwell

apart with him.

He had no wish to monopolise her, but it was a relief to him that the

constant whirl of pleasure about her attracted her so little. He liked

to have her with him, and it soon became a matter of course that she

should accompany him on all his expeditions. She revelled in his tours

of inspection. They were so many picnics to her, and she enjoyed them

with the zest of a child.

And so it came to pass that she was with him among the hills of the

frontier when, like a pent flood suddenly escaping, the storm of

rebellion broke and seethed about them, threatening them with total

annihilation.

No serious trouble had been anticipated. A certain tract of country

had been reported unquiet, and General Roscoe had been ordered to

proceed thither on a tour of inspection and also, to a very mild

degree, of intimidation. Marching through the district from fort to

fort, he had encountered no shadow of opposition. All had gone well.

And then, his work over, and all he set out to do satisfactorily

accomplished, his face towards India and his back to the mountains,

the unexpected had come upon him like a thunderbolt.

Hordes of tribesmen, gathered Heaven knew how or whence, had suddenly

burst upon him from the south, had cut off his advance by sheer

immensity of numbers, and, hemming him in, had forced him gradually

back into the mountain fastnesses through which he had just passed

unmolested.

It was a stroke so wholly new, so subtly executed, that it had won

success almost before the General had realised the weight of the

disaster that had come upon him. He had believed himself at first to

be involved in a mere fray with border thieves. But before he reached

the fort upon which he found himself obliged to fall back, he knew

that he had to cope with a general rising of the tribes, and that the

means at his disposal were as inadequate to stem the rising flood of

rebellion as a pebble thrown into a mountain stream to check its flow.

The men under his command, with the exception of a few officers, were

all native soldiers, and he soon began to have a strong suspicion that

among these he numbered traitors. Nevertheless, he established himself

at the fort, determined there to make his stand till relief should

arrive.

The telegraph wires were cut, and for a time it seemed that all

communication with the outside world was an impossibility. Several

runners were sent out, but failed to break through the besieging

forces. But at last after many desperate days there came a message

from without--a scrap of paper attached to a stone and flung over the

wall of the fort at night. News of the disaster had reached Peshawur,

and Sir Reginald Bassett, with a hastily collected force, was moving

to their assistance.

The news put heart into the garrison, and for a time it seemed that

the worst would be averted. But it became gradually evident to General

Roscoe that the relieving force could not reach them in time. The

water supply had run very low, and the men were already subsisting

upon rations that were scarcely sufficient for the maintenance of

life. There was sickness among them, and there were also many wounded.

The white men were reduced to four, including himself, the native

soldiers had begun to desert, and he had been forced at last to face

the fact that the end was very near.

All this had Muriel Roscoe come through, physically scathless,

mentally torn and battered, and she could not bring herself to realise

that the long-drawn-out misery of the siege could ever be over.

Lying there, tense and motionless, she listened to the shots and yells

in the distance with a shuddering sense that it was all a part of her

life, of her very being, even. The torture and the misery had so eaten

into her soul. Now and then she heard the quick thunder of one of the

small guns that armed the fort, and at the sound her pulses leaped

and quivered. She knew that the ammunition was running very low. These

guns did not often speak now.

Then, during a lull, there came to her the careless humming of a

British voice, the free, confident tread of British feet, approaching

her door.

She caught her breath as a hand rapped smartly upon the panel. She

knew who the visitor was, but she could not bring herself to bid him

enter. A sudden awful fear was upon her. She could neither speak nor

move. She lay, listening intently, hoping against hope that he would

believe her to be sleeping and go away.

The knock was not repeated. Dead silence reigned. And then quickly

and decidedly the door opened, and Nick Ratcliffe stood upon the

threshold. The light struck full upon his face as he halted--a clever,

whimsical face that might mask almost any quality good or bad.

"May I come in, Miss Roscoe?" he asked.

For she had not moved at his appearance. She lay as one dead. But as

he spoke she uncovered her face, and terror incarnate stared wildly at

him from her starting eyes. He entered without further ceremony,

and closed the door behind him. In the shaded lamplight his features

seemed to twitch as if he wanted to smile. So at least it seemed to

her wrought-up fancy.

He gazed greedily at the plate of rice on the table as he came

forward. "Great Jupiter!" he said. "What a sumptuous repast!"

The total freedom from all anxiety or restraint with which he made

this simple observation served to restore to some degree the girl's

tottering self-control. She sat up, sufficiently recovered to remember

that she did not like this man.

"Pray have some if you want it," she said coldly.

He turned his back on it abruptly. "No, don't tempt me," he said.

"It's a fast day for me. I'm acquiring virtue, being conspicuously

destitute of all other forms of comfort. Why don't you eat it

yourself? Are you acquiring virtue too?"

He stood looking down at her quizzically, under rapidly flickering

eyelids. She sat silent, wishing with all her heart that he would go

away.

Nothing, however, was apparently further from his thoughts. After a

moment he sat down in the chair that her father had occupied an hour

before. It was very close to her, and she drew herself slightly

away with a small, instinctive movement of repugnance. But Nick was

sublimely impervious to hints.

"I say, you know," he said abruptly, "you shouldn't take opium. Your

donkey of an _ayah_ ought to know better than to let you have it."

Muriel gave a great start. "I don't"--she faltered. "I--I--"

He shook his head at her, as though reproving a child. "Pussy's out,"

he observed. "It is no good giving chase. But really, you know, you

mustn't do it. You used to be a brave girl once, and now your nerves

are all to pieces."

There was a species of paternal reproach in his tone. Looking at him,

she marvelled that she had ever thought him young and headlong. Almost

in spite of herself she began to murmur excuses.

"I can't help it. I must have something. I don't sleep. I lie for

hours, listening to the fighting. It--it's more than I can bear."

Her voice quivered, and she turned her face aside, unable to hide her

emotion, but furious with herself for displaying it.

Nick said nothing at all to comfort her, and she bitterly resented

his silence. After a pause he spoke again, as if he had banished the

matter entirely from his mind.

"Look here," he said. "I want you to tell me something. I don't know

what sort of a fellow you think I am, though I fancy you don't like

me much. But you're not afraid of me, are you? You know I'm to be

trusted?"

It was her single chance of revenge, and she took it. "I have my

father's word for it," she said.

He nodded thoughtfully as if unaware of the thrust. "Yes, your father

knows me. And so"--he smiled at her suddenly--"you are ready to trust

me on his recommendation? You are ready to follow me blindfold through

danger if I give you my hand to hold?"

She felt a sharp chill strike her heart. What was it he was asking of

her? What did those words of his portend?

"I don't know," she said. "I don't see that it makes much difference

how I feel."

"Well, it does," he assured her. "And that is exactly what I have

come to talk about. Miss Roscoe, will you leave the fort with me,

and escape in disguise? I have thought it all out, and it can be done

without much difficulty. I do not need to tell you that the idea has

your father's full approval."

They were her father's own words, but at sound of them she shrank

and shivered, in sheer horror at the coolness with which they were

uttered. He might have been asking her to stroll with him in the leafy

quiet of some English lane.

Could it be, she asked herself incredulously, could it be that her

father had ever sanctioned and approved so ghastly a risk for her? She

put her hand to her temples. Her brain was reeling. How could she do

this thing? How could she have permitted it to be even suggested to

her? And then, swift through her tortured mind flashed his words:

"There will be an end. I have had to face it to-night." Was it this

that he had meant? Was it for this that he had been preparing her?

With a muffled exclamation she rose, trembling in every limb. "I

can't!" she cried piteously, "oh, I can't! Please go away!"

It might have been the frightened prayer of a child, so beseeching

was it, so full of weakness. But Nick Ratcliffe heard it unmoved. He

waited a few seconds till she came to a stand by the table, her back

towards him. Then with a sudden quiet movement he rose and followed

her.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "But you can't afford to shirk things

at this stage. I am offering you deliverance, though you don't realise

it."

He spoke with force, and if his aim had been to rouse her to a more

practical activity, he gained his end. She turned upon him in swift

and desperate indignation. Her voice rang almost harsh.

"How can you call it deliverance? It is at best a choice of two

horrible evils. You know perfectly well that we could never get

through. You must be mad to suggest such a thing. We should be made

prisoners and massacred under the very guns of the fort."

"I beg your pardon," he said again, and his eyelids quivered a little

as if under the pressure of some controlled emotion. "We shall not be

made prisoners. I know what I am saying. It is deliverance that I am

offering you. Of course you can refuse, and I shall still do my

utmost to save you. But the chances are not equal. I hope you will not

refuse."

The moderation of this speech calmed her somewhat. In her first wild

panic she had almost imagined that he could take her against her will.

She saw that she had been unreasonable, but she was too shaken to tell

him so. Moreover, there was still that about him, notwithstanding his

words, that made her afraid to yield a single inch of ground lest by

some hidden means he should sweep her altogether from her precarious

foothold. Even in the silence, she felt that he was doing battle with

her, and she did not dare to face him.

With a childish gesture of abandonment, she dropped into a chair and

laid her head upon her arms.

"Oh, please go away!" she besought him weakly. "I am so tired--so

tired."

But Ratcliffe did not move. He stood looking down at her, at the black

hair that clustered about her neck, at the bowed, despairing figure,

the piteous, clenched hands.

A little clock in the room began to strike in silvery tones, and he

glanced up. The next instant he bent and laid a bony hand upon her two

clasped ones.

"Can't you decide?" he said. "Will you let me decide for you? Don't

let yourself get scared. You have kept so strong till now." Firmly

as he spoke, there was somehow a note of soothing in his voice, and

almost insensibly the girl was moved by it. She remained silent and

motionless, but the strong grip of his fingers comforted her subtly

notwithstanding.

"Come," he said, "listen a moment and let me tell you my plan of

campaign. It is very simple, and for that reason it is going to

succeed. You are listening now?"

His tone was vigorous and insistent. Muriel sat slowly up in response

to it. She looked down at the thin hand that grasped hers, and

wondered at its strength; but she lacked the spirit at that moment to

resent its touch.

He leaned down upon the table, his face close to hers, and began to

unfold his plan.

"We shall leave the fort directly the moon is down. I have a disguise

for you that will conceal your face and hair. And I shall fake as a

tribesman, so that my dearest friend would never recognise me. They

will be collecting the wounded in the dark, and I will carry you

through on my shoulder as if I had got a dead relation. You won't

object to playing a dead relation of mine?"

He broke into a sudden laugh, but sobered instantly when he saw her

shrink at the sound.

"That's about all the plan," he resumed. "There is nothing very

alarming about it, for they will never spot us in the dark. I'm as

yellow as a Chinaman already. We shall be miles away by morning. And I

know how to find my way afterwards."

He paused, but Muriel made no comment. She was staring straight before

her.

"Can you suggest any amendments?" he asked.

She turned her head and looked at him with newly-roused aversion in

her eyes. She had summoned all her strength to the combat, realising

that now was the moment for resistance if she meant to resist.

"No, Mr. Ratcliffe," she said, with a species of desperate firmness

very different from his own. "I have nothing to suggest. If you wish

to escape, you must go alone. It is quite useless to try to persuade

me any further. Nothing--nothing will induce me to leave my father."

Whether or not he had expected this opposition was not apparent on

Nick's face. It betrayed neither impatience nor disappointment.

"There would be some reason in that," he gravely rejoined, "if you

could do any good to your father by remaining. Of course I see your

point, but it seems to me that it would be harder for him to see you

starve with the rest of the garrison than to know that you had escaped

with me. A woman in your position is bound to be a continual burden

and anxiety to those who protect her. The dearer she is to them, so

much the heavier is the burden. Miss Roscoe, you must see this. You

are not an utter child. You must realise that to leave your father

is about the greatest sacrifice you can make for him at the present

moment. He is worn out with anxiety on your behalf, literally bowed

down by it. For his sake, you are going to do this thing, it being the

only thing left that you can do for him."

There was more than persuasion in his voice. It held authority. But

Muriel heard it without awe. She had passed that stage. The matter

was too momentous to allow of weakness. She had strung herself to the

highest pitch of resistance as a hunted creature at bay. She threw

back her head, a look of obstinacy about her lips, her slight figure

straightened to the rigidity of defiance.

"I will not be forced," she said, in sharp, uneven tones. "Mr.

Ratcliffe, you may go on persuading and arguing till doomsday. I will

not leave my father."

Ratcliffe stood up abruptly. A curious glitter shone in his eyes, and

the light eyebrows twitched a little. She felt that he had suddenly

ceased to do battle with her, yet that the victory was not hers. And

for a second she was horribly frightened, as though an iron trap had

closed upon her and held her at his mercy.

He walked to the door without speaking and opened it. She expected

him to go, sat waiting breathlessly for his departure, but instead he

stood motionless, looking into the dark passage.

She wondered with nerves on edge what he was waiting for. Suddenly

she heard a step without, a few murmured words, and Nick stood on one

side. Her father's Sikh orderly passed him, carrying a tray on which

was a glass full of some dark liquid. He set it down on the table

before her with a deep salaam.

"The General Sahib wishes Missy Sahib to have a good night," he said.

"He cannot come to her himself, but he sends her this by his servant,

and he bids her drink it and sleep."

Muriel looked up at the man in surprise. Her father had never done

such a thing before, and the message astonished her not a little.

Then, remembering that he had shown some anxiety regarding her

appearance that evening, she fancied she began to understand. Yet

it was strange, it was utterly unlike him, to desire her to take an

opiate. She looked at the glass with hesitation.

"Give him my love, Purdu," she said finally to the waiting orderly.

"Tell him I will take it if I cannot sleep without."

The man bowed himself again and withdrew. To her disgust, however,

Nick remained. He was looking at her oddly.

"Miss Roscoe," he said abruptly, "I beg you, don't drink that

stuff. Your father must be mad to offer it to you. Let me take the

beastliness away."

She faced him indignantly. "My father knows what is good for me better

than you do," she said.

He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't profess to be a sage. But any

one will tell you that it is madness to take opium in this reckless

fashion. For Heaven's sake, be reasonable. Don't take it."

He came back to the table, but at his approach she laid her hand upon

the glass. She was quivering with angry excitement.

"I will not endure your interference any longer," she declared, goaded

to headlong, nervous fury by his persistence. "My father's wishes are

enough for me. He desires me to take it, and so I will."

She took up the glass in a sudden frenzy of defiance. He had

frightened her--yes, he had frightened her--but he should see how

little he had gained by that. She took a taste of the liquid, then

paused, again assailed by a curious hesitancy. Had her father really

meant her to take it all?

Nick had stopped short at her first movement, but as she began to

lower the glass in response to that disquieting doubt, he swooped

suddenly forward like a man possessed.

For a fleeting instant she thought he was going to wrest it from her,

but in the next she understood--understood the man's deep treachery,

and with what devilish ingenuity he had worked upon her. Holding her

with an arm that felt like iron, he forced the glass back between her

teeth, and tilted the contents down her throat. She strove to resist

him, strove wildly, frantically, not to swallow the draught. But he

held her pitilessly. He compelled her, gripping her right hand with

the glass, and pinning the other to her side.

When it was over, when he had worked his will and the hateful draught

was swallowed, he set her free and turned himself sharply from her.

She sprang up trembling and hysterical. She could have slain him in

that instant had she possessed the means to her hand. But her strength

was more nearly exhausted than she knew. Her limbs doubled up under

her weight, and as she tottered, seeking for support, she realised

that she was vanquished utterly at last.

She saw him wheel quickly and start to support her, sought to evade

him, failed--and as she felt his arms lift her, she cried aloud in

anguished helplessness.

What followed dwelt ever after in her memory as a hideous dream, vivid

yet not wholly tangible. He laid her down upon the couch and bent over

her, his hands upon her, holding her still; for every muscle, every

nerve twitched spasmodically, convulsively, in the instinctive effort

of the powerless body to be free. She had a confused impression also

that he spoke to her, but what he said she was never able to recall.

In the end, her horror faded, and she saw him as through a mist

bending above her, grim and tense and silent, controlling her as it

were from an immense distance. And even while she yet dimly wondered,

he passed like a shadow from her sight, and wonder itself ceased.

Half an hour later Nicholas Ratcliffe, the wit and clown of his

regiment, regarded by many as harebrained or wantonly reckless,

carried away from the beleaguered fort among the hostile mountains the

slight, impassive figure of an English girl.

The night was dark, populated by terrors alive and ghastly. But he

went through it as one unaware of its many dangers. Light-footed and

fearless, he passed through the midst of his enemies, marching with

the sublime audacity of the dominant race, despising caution--yea,

grinning triumphant in the very face of Death.

CHAPTER IV

DESOLATION

Out of a deep abyss of darkness in which she seemed to have wandered

ceaselessly and comfortlessly for many days, Muriel Roscoe came

haltingly back to the surface of things. She was very weak, so weak

that to open her eyes was an exertion requiring all her resolution,

and to keep them open during those first hours of returning life a

physical impossibility. She knew that she was not alone, for gentle

hands ministered to her, and she was constantly aware of some one who

watched her tirelessly, with never-failing attention. But she felt

not the smallest interest regarding this faithful companion, being

too weary to care whether she lived or fell away for ever down those

unending steeps up which some unseen influence seemed magnetically to

draw her.

It was a stage of returning consciousness that seemed to last even

longer than the period of her wandering, but this also began to pass

at length. The light grew stronger all about her, the mists rolled

slowly away from her clogged brain, leaving only a drowsing languor

that was infinitely restful to her tired senses.

And then while she lay half-dreaming and wholly content, a remorseless

hand began to bathe her face and head with ice-cold water. She awoke

reluctantly, even resentfully.

"Don't!" she entreated like a child. "I am so tired. Let me sleep."

"My poor dear, I know all about it," a motherly voice made answer.

"But it's time for you to wake."

She did not grasp the words--only, very vaguely, their meaning; and

this she made a determined, but quite fruitless, effort to defy. In

the end, being roused in spite of herself, she opened her eyes and

gazed upwards.

And all his life long Nick Ratcliffe remembered the reproach that

those eyes held for him. It was as if he had laid violent hands upon a

spirit that yearned towards freedom, and had dragged it back into the

sordid captivity from which it had so nearly escaped.

But it was only for a moment that she looked at him so. The reproach

faded swiftly from the dark eyes and he saw a startled horror dawn

behind it.

Suddenly she raised herself with a faint cry. "Where am I?" she

gasped. "What--what have you done with me?"

She stared around her wildly, with unreasoning, nightmare terror. She

was lying on a bed of fern in a narrow, dark ravine. The place was

full of shadow, though far overhead she saw the light of day. At one

end, only a few yards from her, a stream rushed and gurgled among

great boulders, and its insistent murmur filled the air. Behind her

rose a great wall of grey rock, clothed here and there with some dark

growth. Its rugged face was dented with hollows that looked like the

homes of wild animals. There was a constant trickle of water on all

sides, an eerie whispering, remote but incessant. As she sat there in

growing panic, a great bat-like creature, immense and shadowy, swooped

soundlessly by her.

She shrank back with another cry, and found Nick Ratcliffe's arm

thrust protectingly about her.

"It's all right," he said, in a matter-of-fact tone. "You're not

frightened at flying-foxes, are you?"

Recalled to the fact of his presence, she turned sharply, and flung

his arm away as though it had been a snake. "Don't touch me!" she

gasped, passionate loathing in voice and gesture.

"Sorry," said Nick imperturbably. "I meant well."

He began to busy himself with a small bundle that lay upon the ground,

whistling softly between his teeth, and for a few seconds Muriel sat

and watched him. He was dressed in a flowing native garment, that

covered him from head to foot. Out of the heavy enveloping folds his

smooth, yellow face looked forth, sinister and terrible to her fevered

vision. He looked like some evil bird, she thought to herself.

Glancing down, she saw that she was likewise attired, save that

her head was bare. The hair hung wet on her forehead, and the water

dripped down her face. She put up her hand half-mechanically to wipe

the drops away. Her fear was mounting rapidly higher.

She knew now what had happened. He had drugged her forcibly--she

shivered at the remembrance--and had borne her away to this dreadful

place during her unconsciousness. Her father was left behind in the

fort. He had sanctioned her removal. He had given her, a helpless

captive, into this man's keeping.

But no! Her whole soul rose up in sudden fierce denial of this. He

had never done this thing. He had never given his consent to an act so

cowardly and so brutal. He was incapable of parting with her thus. He

could never have permitted so base a trick, so cruel, so outrageous, a

deed of treachery.

Strength came suddenly to her--the strength of frenzy. She leaped to

her feet. She would escape. She would go back to him through all

the hordes of the enemy. She would face anything--anything in the

world--rather than remain at the mercy of this man.

But--he had not been looking at her, and he did not look at her,--his

arm shot out as she moved, and his hand fastened claw-like upon her

dress.

"Sorry," he said again, in the same practical tone. "But you'll have

something to eat before you go."

She stooped and strove wildly, frantically, to shake off the detaining

hand. But it held her like a vice, with awful skeleton fingers that

she could not, dared not, touch.

"Let me go!" she cried impotently. "How dare you? How dare you?"

Still he did not raise his head. He was on his knees, and he would not

even trouble himself to rise.

"I can't help myself," he told her coolly. "It's not my fault. It's

yours."

She made a final, violent effort to wrest herself free. And then--it

was as if all power were suddenly taken from her--her strained nerves

gave way completely, and she dropped down upon the ground again in a

quivering agony of helplessness.

Nick's hand fell away from her. "You shouldn't," he said gently. "It's

no good, you know."

He returned to his former occupation while she sat with her face

hidden, in a stupor of fear, afraid to move lest he should touch her

again.

"Now," said Nick, after a brief pause, "let me have the pleasure of

seeing you break your fast. There is some of that excellent boiled

rice of yours here. You will feel better when you have had some."

She trembled at the sound of his voice. Could he make her eat also

against her will, she wondered?

"Come!" said Nick again, in a tone of soft wheedling that he might

have employed to a fractious child. "It'll do you good, you know,

Muriel. Won't you try? Just a mouthful--to please me!"

Reluctantly she uncovered her face, and looked at him. He was kneeling

in front of her, the _chuddah_ pushed back from his face, humbly

offering her an oatmeal biscuit with a small heap of rice piled upon

it.

She drew back shuddering. "I couldn't eat anything--possibly," she

said, and even her voice seemed to shrink. "You can. You take it. I

would rather die."

Nick did not withdraw his hand. "Take it, Muriel," he said quietly.

"It is going to do you good."

She flashed him a desperate glance in which anger, fear, abhorrence,

were strongly mingled. He advanced the biscuit a little nearer. There

was a queer look on his yellow face, almost a bullying look.

"Take it," he said again.

And against her will, almost without conscious movement, she obeyed

him. The untempting morsel passed from his hand to hers, and under the

compulsion of his insistence she began to eat.

She felt as if every mouthful would choke her, but she persevered,

urged by the dread certainty that he would somehow have his way.

Not until the last fragment was gone did she feel his vigilance relax,

but he ate nothing himself though there remained several biscuits and

a very little of the rice.

"You are feeling better?" he asked her then.

A curious suspicion that he was waiting to tell her something made

her answer almost feverishly in the affirmative. It amounted to a

premonition of evil tidings, and instinctively her thoughts flew to

her father.

"What is it?" she questioned nervously. "You have something to say."

Nick's face was turned from her. He seemed to be gazing across the

ravine.

"Yes," he said, after a moment.

"Oh, what?" she broke in. "Tell me quickly--quickly! It is my father,

I know, I know. He has been hurt--wounded--"

She stopped. Nick had lifted one hand as if to silence her. "My dear,"

he said, his voice very low, "your father died last night--before we

left the fort."

At her cry of agony he started up, and in a second he was on his

knees by her side and had gathered her to him as though she had been

a little child in need of comfort. She did not shrink from him in her

extremity. The blow had been too sudden, too overwhelming. It blotted

out all lesser sensibilities. In those first terrible moments she

did not think of Nick at all, was scarcely conscious of his presence,

though she vaguely felt the comfort of his arms.

And he, holding her fast against his breast, found no consolation, no

word of any sort wherewith to soothe her. He only rocked her gently,

pressing her head to his shoulder, while his face, bent above her,

quivered all over as the face of a man in torture.

Muriel spoke at last, breaking her stricken silence with a strangely

effortless composure. "Tell me more," she said.

She stirred in his arms as if to free herself from some oppression,

and finally drew herself away from him, though not as if she wished to

escape his touch. She still seemed to be hardly aware of him. He was

the medium of her information, that was all. Nick dropped back into

his former attitude, his hands clasped firmly round his knees, his

eyes, keen as a bird's and extremely bright, gazing across the ravine.

His lips still quivered a little, but his voice was perfectly even and

quiet.

"It happened very soon after the firing began. It must have been

directly after he left you. He was hit in the breast, just over the

heart. We couldn't do anything for him. He knew himself that it was

mortal. In fact, I think he had almost expected it. We took him into

the guardroom and made him as easy as possible. He lost consciousness

before he died. He was lying unconscious when I came to you."

Muriel made a sharp movement. "And you never told me," she said, in a

dry whisper.

"I thought it best," he answered with great gentleness. "You could not

have gone to him. He didn't wish it."

"Why not?" she demanded, and suddenly her voice rang harsh again. "Why

could I not have gone to him? Why didn't he wish it?"

Nick hesitated for a single instant. Then, "It was for your own sake,"

he said, not looking at her.

"You mean he suffered?"

"While he remained conscious--yes." Nick spoke reluctantly. "It didn't

last long," he said.

She scarcely seemed to hear him. "And so you tricked me," she said;

"you tricked me while my father was lying dying. I was not to see

him--either then or after--for my own sake! And do you think"--her

voice rising--"do you think that you were in any way justified in

treating me so? Do you think it was merciful to blind me and to take

from me all I should ever have of comfort to look back upon? Do you

think I couldn't have borne it all ten thousand times easier if I

could have seen and known the very worst? It was my right--it was

my right! How dared you take it from me? I will never forgive

you--never!"

She was on her feet as the passionate protest burst from her, but she

swayed as she stood and flung out her arms with a groping gesture.

"I could have borne it," she cried again wildly, piteously. "I could

have borne anything--anything--if I had only known!"

She broke into a sudden, terrible sobbing, and threw herself

down headlong upon the earth, clutching at the moss with shaking,

convulsive fingers, and crying between her sobs for "Daddy! Daddy!" as

though her agony could pierce the dividing barrier and bring him

back to her. Nick made no further attempt to help her. He sat gazing

stonily out before him in a sphinx-like stillness that never varied

while the storm of her anguish spent itself at his side.

Even after her sobs had ceased from sheer exhaustion he made no

movement, no sign that he was so much as thinking of her.

Only when at last she raised herself with difficulty, and put the

heavy hair back from her disfigured face, did he turn slightly and

hold out to her a small tin cup.

"It's only water," he said gently. "Have some."

She took it almost mechanically and drank, then lay back with closed

eyes and burning head, sick and blinded by her paroxysm of weeping.

A little later she felt his hands moving about her again, but she was

too spent to open her eyes. He bathed her face with a care equal to

any woman's, smoothed back her hair, and improvised a pillow for her

head.

And afterwards she knew that he sat down by her, out of sight but

close at hand, a silent presence watching over her, till at last, worn

out with grief and the bitter strain of the past weeks, she sank into

natural, dreamless slumber, and slept for hours.

CHAPTER V

THE DEVIL IN THE WILDERNESS

It was dark when Muriel awoke--so dark that she lay for a while

dreamily fancying herself in bed. But this illusion passed very

quickly as her brain, refreshed and active, resumed its work. The cry

of a jackal at no great distance roused her to full consciousness, and

she started up in the chill darkness, trembling and afraid.

Instantly a warm hand grasped hers, and a low voice spoke. "It's all

right," said Nick. "I'm here."

"Oh, isn't it dark?" she said. "Isn't it dark?"

"Don't be frightened," he answered gently. "Come close to me. You are

cold."

She crept to him shivering, thankful for the shielding arm he threw

around her.

"The sunrise can't be far off," he said. "I expect you are hungry,

aren't you?"

She was very hungry, and he put a biscuit into her hand. The very fact

of eating there in the darkness in some measure reassured her. She ate

several biscuits, and began to feel much better.

"Getting warmer?" questioned Nick. "Let me feel your hands." They were

still cold, and he took them and thrust them down against his breast.

She shrank a little at the touch of his warm flesh.

"It will make you so cold," she murmured.

But he only laughed at her softly, and pressed them closer. "I am not

easily chilled," he said. "Besides, it's sleeping that makes you cold.

And I haven't slept."

Muriel heard the news with astonishment. She was no longer angry with

Nick, and her fears of him were dormant. Though she would never forget

and might never forgive his treachery, he was her sole protector in

that wilderness of many terrors, and she lacked the resolution to keep

him at arm's length. There was, moreover, something comforting in his

presence, something that vastly reassured her, making her lean upon

him almost in spite of herself.

"Haven't you slept at all?" she asked him in wonder. "How in the world

did you keep awake?"

He did not answer her, only laughed again as though at some secret

joke. He seemed to be in rather good spirits, she noticed, and she

marvelled at him with a heavy pain at her heart that was utterly

beyond expression or relief.

She sat silent for a little, then at length withdrew her hands,

assuring him that they were quite warm.

"And I want to talk to you," she added, in a more practical tone than

she had previously managed to assume. "Mr. Ratcliffe, you may be in

command of this expedition, but I think you ought to tell me your

plans."

"Call me Nick, won't you?" he said. "It'll make things easier. You are

quite welcome to know my plans, such as they are. I haven't managed

to develop anything very ingenious during all these hours. You see we

are, to a certain extent, at the mercy of circumstances. This place

isn't more than a dozen miles from the fort, and the hills all round

are infested with tribesmen. I hoped at first that we should get clear

in the night, but you were asleep, and on the whole it seemed best to

lie up for another day. We might make a bolt for it to-morrow night if

all goes well. I have a sort of instinct for these mountains. There is

always plenty of cover for those who know how to find it. It will be

slow progress, of course, but we will keep moving south, and, given

luck, we may fall in with Bassett's relief column before many days."

So with much serenity he disclosed his plans, and Muriel marvelled

afresh at the confidence that buoyed him up. Was he really as

sublimely free from anxiety as he wished her to believe, she wondered?

It was difficult to think otherwise, even though he had admitted that

they were governed by circumstance. She began to think that there was

magic in him, some hidden reserve force upon which he could always

draw when all other resources failed.

Another matter had also caught her attention, and this she presently

decided to investigate. She had never thought of Nick Ratcliffe as in

any sense a remarkable person before.

"Did you actually carry me ten miles?" she asked.

"Something very near it," said Nick.

"How in the world did you do it?" Her interest was quickened.

Undoubtedly there was something uncanny in this man's strength.

"You're not very heavy, you know," he said.

His arm was still around her, and she suffered it; for the darkness

still frightened her when she allowed herself to think.

"Have you had anything to eat?" she asked him next.

"Not quite lately," said Nick. "I've been smoking. I wonder you didn't

notice it."

His tone was somehow repressive, but she ignored it with a growing

temerity. After all, he did not seem such an alarming person on a

nearer acquaintance.

"Does smoking do as well as eating?" she asked.

"Much better," said Nick promptly. "Care to try?"

She shook her head in the darkness. "I don't think you are telling the

truth," she said.

"What?" said Nick.

He spoke carelessly, but she did not repeat her assertion. A sudden

shyness descended upon her, and she became silent. Nick was quiet too,

and she wondered what was passing in his mind. But for the tenseness

of the arm that encircled her, she could have believed him to be

dozing. The silence was becoming oppressive when abruptly he broke it.

"See!" he said. "Here comes the dawn!"

She started and stared in front of her, seeing nothing.

"Over to your left," said Nick. And turning she beheld a lightening of

the darkness high above them.

She breathed a sigh of thankfulness, and watched it grow. It spread

rapidly. The walls of the ravine showed ghostly grey, then faintly

pink. Through the dimness the boulders scattered about the stream

stood up like mediaeval monsters, and for a few panic-stricken seconds

Muriel took the twining roots of a rhododendron close at hand for the

coils of a gigantic snake. Then as the ordinary light of day filtered

down into the gloomy place she sighed again with relief, and looked at

her companion.

He was sitting with his chin on his hand, gazing across the ravine. He

did not stir or glance in her direction. His yellow face was seamed in

a thousand wrinkles.

A vague misgiving assailed her as she looked at him. There was

something unnatural in his stillness.

"Nick!" she said at length with hesitation.

He turned sharply, and in an instant the ready grin leaped out upon

his face. "Good morning," he said lightly. "I was just thinking how

nice it would be to go down there and have a wash. We've got to pass

the time somehow, you know. Will you go first?"

His gaiety baffled her, but she did not feel wholly reassured. She got

up slowly, and as she did so, her attention was caught by something

that sent a thrill of dismay through her.

"Don't look at my feet, please," said Nick. "They won't bear

inspection at present."

She turned horrified eyes to his face, as he thrust them down into a

bunch of fern. "How dreadful!" she exclaimed. "They are all cut and

gashed. I didn't know you were barefooted."

"I wasn't," said Nick. "I've got some sandals here. Don't look like

that! You make me want to cry. I assure you it doesn't hurt in the

least."

He grinned again as he uttered this cheerful lie, but Muriel was not

deceived.

"You must let me bind them up," she said.

"Not for the world," laughed Nick. "I couldn't walk with my feet

in poultice-bags, and we shall have some more rough marching to do

to-night. Now don't you worry. Run along like a good girl. I'm going

to say my prayers."

It was flippantly spoken, but Muriel realised that it would be better

to obey. She turned about slowly, and began to make her way down to

the stream.

The sunlight was beginning to slant through the ravine, and here and

there the racing water gleamed silvery. It was intensely refreshing to

kneel and bathe face and hands in its icy coldness. She lingered long

over it. Its sparkling purity seemed to reach and still the throbbing

misery at her heart. In some fashion it brought her peace.

She would have prayed, but she felt she had no prayer to offer. She

had no favour to ask for herself, and her world was quite empty now.

She had no one in her heart for whom to pray.

Yet for awhile she knelt dumb among the lifeless stones, her face

hidden, her thoughts with the father whose loss she had scarcely

begun to realise. It might be that God would understand and pity her

silence, she thought drearily to herself.

The rush of the water drowned all sound but its own, and the memory

of Nick, waiting above, faded from her consciousness like a dream. Her

brain felt numb and heavy still. She did not want to think. She leaned

her head against a rock, closing her eyes. The continuous babble of

the stream was like a lullaby.

Under its soothing influence she might have slept, a blessed

drowsiness was stealing over her, when suddenly there flashed through

her being a swift warning of approaching danger. Whence it came she

knew not, but its urgency was such that instinctively she started up

and looked about her.

The next instant, with a sound half-gasp, half-cry, she was on

her feet, and shrinking back against her sheltering boulder in the

paralysis of a great horror. There, within a few yards of her and

drawing nearer, ever nearer, with a beast-like stealth, was a tall,

black-bearded tribesman. Transfixed by terror, she stood and gazed

at him, waiting dumbly, cold from head to foot, feeling as though her

very heart had turned to stone.

Nearer he came, and yet nearer, soundlessly over the stones. His eyes,

gleaming, devilish, were to her as the eyes of a devouring monster.

In her agony she tried to shriek aloud, but her voice was gone, her

throat seemed locked. She was powerless.

Close to her, for a single instant he paused; then, as in a lightning

flash, she saw the narrow, sinewy hand and snake-like arm dart forward

to seize her, felt every muscle in her body stiffen to rigidity in

anticipation of its touch, and shrank--shrank in every nerve though

she made no outward sign of shrinking.

But on the instant, with a panther-like spring, sure, noiseless,

deadly, another figure leapt suddenly across her vision. There

followed a violent struggle in front of her, a confused swaying to and

fro, a cry choked instantly and terribly, the tinkling sound of steel

falling upon stone. And then both figures were on the ground almost

at her feet, locked together in mortal combat, fighting, fighting

like demons in a silence that throbbed with the tumult of unrestrained

savagery.

Later she never could remember how long it took her to realise that

the second apparition was Nick, or if she had known it from the first.

She felt herself hovering upon the brink of a great emptiness, a void

immense, and yet all her senses were alive and tingling with horror.

With agonised perception of what was passing, she yet felt numbed: as

though her body were dead, but still contained a vital, tortured soul.

And it was thus that she presently saw Nick's face bent above the

black-bearded face of his enemy; and remembered suddenly and horribly

a picture she had once seen of the devil in the wilderness.

With his knees he was gripping the writhing body of his fallen foe.

With his hands--it came upon her as she watched with a shock of

anguished comprehension--he was deliberately and with deadly intention

choking out the man's life.

"Curse you! Die!" she heard him say and his voice sounded like the

snarl of a wild beast. His upper lip was drawn back, the lower one was

between his teeth, and from it the blood dripped continuously upon his

hands and upon the dark throat he gripped.

"Give me that knife!" he suddenly said, with an upward jerk of the

head.

A dagger was lying almost within his reach, close to her foot. She

could have kicked it towards him had not her body been fast bound in

that deathly inertia. But her whole soul rose up in wild revolt at

the order. She tried to cry out, to implore him to have mercy, but

she could not make a sound. She could only stand in frozen horror, and

witness this awful thing.

She saw Nick shift his grip to one hand and reach out with the other

for the weapon. He grasped it and recovered himself. A great darkness

was descending upon her, but it did not come at once. It hovered

before her eyes, and seemed to pass, and again she saw the horror

at her feet; saw Nick, bent to destroy like an eagle above his prey,

merciless, full of strength, terrible; saw the man beneath him,

writhing, convulsed, tortured; saw his upturned face, and starting

eyes; saw the sudden downward swoop of Nick's right hand, the flash of

the descending steel.

In her agony she burst the spell that bound her, and shrieking turned

to flee from that awful sight.

But even as she moved, the darkness came suddenly back upon her,

enveloping her, overwhelming her--a darkness that could be felt. For

a little she fought against it frantically, impotently. Then her feet

seemed to totter over the edge of a dreadful, formless silence. She

knew that she fell.

CHAPTER VI

WHEN STRONG MEN FAIL

"Wake up!" said Nick softly. "Wake up! Don't be afraid."

But Muriel turned her face from the light with a moan. Memory winged

with horror was sweeping back upon her, and she wanted never to wake

again.

"Wake up!" Nick said again, and this time there was insistence in his

voice. "Open your eyes, Muriel. There is nothing to frighten you."

Shuddering, she obeyed him. She was lying once more upon her couch of

ferns, and he was stooping over her, looking closely into her face.

His eyes were extraordinarily bright, like the eyes of an eagle, but

the lids flickered so rapidly that he seemed to be looking through her

rather than at her. There was a wound upon his lower lip, and at the

sight she shuddered again, closing her eyes. She remembered that the

last time she had looked upon that face, it had been the face of a

devil.

"Oh, go away! Go away!" she wailed. "Let me die!"

"I will go away," he answered swiftly, "if you will promise to drink

what is in this cup."

He pressed it against her hand, and she took it almost mechanically.

"It is only brandy and water," he said. "You will drink it?"

"If I must," she answered weakly.

"You must," he rejoined, and she heard him rise and move away. She

strained her ears to listen, but she very soon ceased to hear him; and

then raising herself cautiously, she drank. A warm thrill of life ran

through her veins with the draught, steadying her, refreshing her. But

it was long before she could bring herself to look round.

The miniature roar of the stream was the only sound to be heard, and

when at length she glanced downwards there was no sign anywhere of

the ghastly spectacle she had just witnessed. She saw the rock behind

which she had knelt, and again a violent fit of shuddering assailed

her. What did that rock conceal?

Nevertheless she presently took courage to rise, looking about her

furtively, half afraid that Nick might pop up at any moment to detain

her. For she felt that she could not stay longer in that place,

whatever he might say or do. The one idea that possessed her was to

get away from him, to escape from his horrible presence, whither she

neither knew nor cared. If he appeared to stop her then, she thought

that she would go raving mad.

But she saw nothing of him as she stood there, and with deep relief

she began to creep away. Half a dozen yards she covered, and then

stood suddenly still with her heart in her throat. There, immediately

in front of her, flung prone upon the ground with his face on his

arms, was Nick. He did not move at her coming, did not seem to hear.

And the thought came to her to avoid him by a circuit, and yet escape.

But something--a queer, indefinable something--made her pause. Why was

he lying there? Had he been hurt in that awful struggle? Was he--was

he unconscious? Was he--dead?

She fought back the impulse to fly, not for its unworthiness, but

because she felt that she must know.

Trembling, she moved a little nearer to the prostrate, motionless

figure.

"Nick!" she whispered under her breath.

He made no sign.

Her doubt turned to sudden, overmastering fear that pricked her

forward in spite of herself.

"Nick!" she said again, and finding herself close to him she bent and

very slightly touched his shoulder.

He moved then, and she almost gasped with relief. He turned his head

sharply without raising himself, and she saw the grim lines of his

lean cheek and jaw.

"That you, Muriel?" he said, speaking haltingly, spasmodically. "I'm

awfully sorry. Fact is--I'm not well. I shall be--better--directly. Go

back, won't you?"

He broke off, and lay silent, his hands clenched as if he were in

pain.

Muriel stood looking down at him in consternation. It was her chance

to escape--a chance that might never occur again--but she had no

further thought of taking it.

"What is it?" she asked him timidly, "Can I--do anything?"

And then she suddenly saw what was the matter. It burst upon her--a

startling revelation. Possibly the sight of those skeleton fists

helped her to enlightenment. She turned swiftly and sped back to their

camping ground.

In thirty seconds or less, she was back again and stooping over him

with a piece of brown bread in her hand.

"Eat this," she ordered, in a tone of authority.

Nick's face was hidden again. He seemed to be fighting with himself.

His voice came at length, muffled and indistinct.

"No, no! Take it away! I'll have a drain of brandy. And I've got some

tobacco left."

Muriel stooped lower. She caught the words though they were scarcely

audible. She laid her hand upon his arm, stronger in the moment's

emergency than she had been since leaving the fort.

"You are to eat it," she said very decidedly. "You shall eat it. Do

you hear, Nick? I know what is the matter with you. You are starving.

I ought to have seen it before."

Nick uttered a shaky laugh, and dragged himself up on to his elbows.

"I'm not starving," he declared. "Take it away, Muriel. Do you think

I'm going to eat your luncheon, tea, and dinner, and to-morrow's

breakfast as well?"

"You are going to eat this," she answered.

He flashed her a glance of keen curiosity. "Am I?" he said.

"You must," she said, speaking with an odd vehemence which later

surprised herself. "Why should you go out of your way to tell me a

lie? Do you think I can't see?"

Nick raised himself slowly. Something in the situation seemed to have

deprived him of his usual readiness. But he would not take the bread,

would not even look at it.

"I'm better now," he said. "We'll go back."

Muriel stood for a second irresolute, then sharply turned her back.

Nick sat and watched her in silence. Suddenly she wheeled. "There!"

she said. "I've divided it. You will eat this at least. It's absurd of

you to starve yourself. You might as well have stayed in the fort to

do that."

This was unanswerable. Nick took the bread without further protest.

He began to eat, marvelling at his own docility; and suddenly he knew

that he was ravenous.

There was very little left when at length he looked up.

"Show me what you have saved for yourself," he said.

But Muriel backed away with a short, hysterical laugh.

He started to his feet and took her rudely by the shoulder. "Do

you mean to say--" he began, almost with violence; and then checked

himself, peering at her with fierce, uncertain eyes.

She drew away from him, all her fears returning upon her in a flood;

but at her movement he set her free and turned his back.

"Heaven knows what you did it for," he said, seeming to control his

voice with some difficulty. "It wasn't for your own sake, and I won't

presume to think it was for mine. But when the time comes for handing

round rewards, may it be remembered that your offering was something

more substantial than a cup of cold water."

He broke off with a queer sound in the throat, and began to move away.

But Muriel followed him, an unaccountable sense of responsibility

overcoming her reluctance.

"Nick!" she said.

He stood still without turning. She had a feeling that he was putting

strong restraint upon himself. With an effort she forced herself to

continue.

"You want sleep, I know. Will you--will you lie down while I watch?"

He shook his head without looking at her.

"But I wish it," she persisted. "I can wake you if--anything happens."

"You wouldn't dare," said Nick.

"I suppose that means you are afraid to trust me," she said.

He turned at that. "It means nothing of the sort. But you've had one

scare, and you may have another. I think myself that that fellow was

a scout on the look-out for Bassett's advance guard. But Heaven only

knows what brought him to this place, and there may be others. That's

why I didn't dare to shoot."

He paused, his light eyebrows raised, surveying her questioningly; for

Muriel had suddenly covered her face with both hands. But in another

moment she looked up again, and spoke with an effort.

"Your being awake couldn't lessen the danger. Won't you--please--be

reasonable about it? I am doing my best."

There was a deep note of appeal in her voice, and abruptly Nick gave

in.

He moved back to their resting-place without another word, and flung

himself face downwards beside the nest of fern that he had made for

her, lying stretched at full length like a log.

She had not expected so sudden and complete a surrender. It took her

unawares, and she stood looking down at him, uncertain how to proceed.

But after a few seconds he turned his head towards her and spoke.

"You'll stay by me, Muriel?"

"Of course," she answered, that unwonted sense of responsibility still

strongly urging her.

He murmured something unintelligible, and stirred uneasily. She knew

in a flash what he wanted, but a sick sense of dread held her back.

She felt during the silence that followed as though he were pleading

with her, urging her, even entreating her. Yet still she resisted,

standing near him indeed, but with a desperate reluctance at her

heart, a shrinking unutterable from the bare thought of any closer

proximity to him that was as the instinctive recoil of purity from a

thing unclean.

The horror of his deed had returned upon her over-whelmingly with his

brief reference to it. His lack of emotion seemed to her as hideous

callousness, more horrible than the deed itself. His physical

exhaustion had called her out of herself, but the reaction was doubly

terrible.

Nick said no more. He lay quite motionless, hardly seeming to breathe,

and she realised that there was no repose in his attitude. He was not

even trying to rest.

She wrung her hands together. It could not go on, this tension. Either

she must yield to his unspoken desire, or he would sit up and cry

off the bargain. And she knew that sleep was a necessity to him.

Common-sense told her that he was totally unfit for further hardship

without it.

She closed her eyes a moment, summoning all her strength for the

greatest sacrifice she had ever made. And then in silence she sat down

beside him, within reach of his hand.

He uttered a great sigh and suffered his whole body to relax. And she

knew by the action, though he did not speak a word, that she had set

his mind at rest.

Scarcely a minute later, his quiet breathing told her that he slept,

but she sat on by his side without moving during the long empty hours

of her vigil. He had trusted her without a question, and, as her

father's daughter, she would at whatever cost prove herself worthy of

his trust.

CHAPTER VII

THE COMING OF AN ARMY

Through a great part of the night that followed they tramped steadily

southward. The stars were Nick's guide, though as time passed he began

to make his way with the confidence of one well-acquainted with his

surroundings. The instinct of locality was a sixth sense with him.

Hand in hand, over rocky ground, through deep ravines, by steep and

difficult tracks, they made their desperate way. Sometimes in the

distance dim figures moved mysteriously, revealed by starlight,

but none questioned or molested them. They passed from rock to rock

through the heart of the enemy's country, unrecognised, unobserved.

There were times when Nick grasped his revolver under his disguise,

ready, ready at a moment's notice, to keep his word to the girl's

father, should detection be their portion; but each time as the danger

passed them by he tightened his hold upon her, drawing her forward

with greater assurance.

They scarcely spoke throughout the long, long march. Muriel had moved

at first with a certain elasticity, thankful to escape at last from

the horrors of their resting-place. But very soon a great weariness

came upon her. She was physically unfit for any prolonged exertion.

The long strain of the siege had weakened her more than she knew.

Nevertheless, she kept on bravely, uttering no complaint, urged to

utmost effort by the instinctive desire to escape. It was this one

idea that occupied all her thoughts during that night. She shrank with

a vivid horror from looking back. And she could not see into the dim

blank future. It was mercifully screened from her sight.

At her third heavy stumble, Nick stopped and made her swallow some

raw brandy from his flask. This buoyed her up for a while, but it was

evident to them both that her strength was fast failing. And presently

he stopped again, and without a word lifted her in his arms. She

gasped a protest to which he made no response. His arms compassed

her like steel, making her feel helpless as an infant. He was limping

himself, she noticed; yet he bore her strongly, without faltering,

sure-footed as a mountain goat over the broken ground, till he found

at length what he deemed a safe halting-place in a clump of stunted

trees.

The sunrise revealed a native village standing among rice and cotton

fields in the valley below them.

"I shall have to go foraging," Nick said.

But Muriel's nerves that had been tottering on the verge of

collapse for some time here broke down completely. She clung to him

hysterically and entreated him not to leave her.

"I can't bear it! I can't bear it!" she kept reiterating. "If you go,

I must go too. I can't--I can't stay here alone."

He gave way instantly, seeing that she was in a state of mind that

bordered upon distraction, and that he could not safely leave her. He

sat down beside her, therefore, making her as comfortable as he could;

and she presently slept with her head upon his shoulder. It was but

a broken slumber, however, and she awoke from it crying wildly that

a man was being murdered--murdered--murdered--and imploring him with

agonised tears to intervene.

He quieted her with a steady insistence that gained its end, though

she crouched against him sobbing for some time after. As the sun rose

higher her fever increased, but she remained conscious and suffering

intensely, all through the heat of the day. Then, as the evening drew

on, she slipped into a heavy stupor.

It was the opportunity Nick had awaited for hours, and he seized it.

Laying her back in the deep shadow of a boulder, he went swiftly down

into the valley. The last light was passing as he strode through the

village, a gaunt, silent figure in a hillman's dress, a native dagger

in his girdle. Save that he had pulled the _chuddah_ well over his

face, he attempted no concealment.

He glided by a ring of old men seated about a fire, moving like a

shadow through the glare. They turned to view him, but he had already

passed with the tread of a wolf, and the mud wall of one of the

cottages hid him from sight.

Into this hut he dived as though some instinct guided him. He paid no

heed to a woman on a string-bedstead with a baby at her breast, who

chattered shrilly at his entrance. Preparations for a meal were

in progress, and he scarcely paused before he lighted upon what he

sought. A small earthen pitcher stood on the mud floor. He swooped

upon it, caught it up, splashing milk in all directions, clapped his

hand yellow and claw-like upon the mouth, and was gone.

There arose a certain hue and cry behind him, but he was swiftly

beyond detection, a fleeing shadow up the hillside. And the baffled

villagers, returning, found comfort in the reflection that he was

doubtless a holy man and that his brief visit would surely entail a

blessing.

By the time they arrived at this conclusion, Nick was kneeling by the

girl's side, supporting her while she drank. The nourishment revived

her. She came to herself, and thanked him.

"You will have some too," said she anxiously.

And Nick drank also with a laugh and a joke to cloak his eagerness.

That draught of milk was more to him at that moment than the choicest

wine of the gods.

He sat down beside her again when he had thus refreshed himself. He

thought that she was drowsy, and was surprised when presently she laid

a trembling hand upon his arm.

He bent over her quickly. "What is it? Anything I can do?"

She did not shrink from him any longer. He could but dimly see her

face in the strong shadow cast by the moonlight behind the trees.

"I want just to tell you, Nick," she said faintly, "that you will have

to go on without me when the moon sets. You needn't mind about leaving

me any more. I shall be dead before the morning comes. I'm not afraid.

I think I'm rather glad. I am so very, very tired."

Her weak voice failed.

Nick was stooping low over her. He did not speak at once. He only took

the nerveless hand that lay upon his arm and carried it to his lips,

breathing for many seconds upon the cold fingers.

When at length he spoke, his tone was infinitely gentle, but it

possessed, notwithstanding, a certain quality of arresting force.

"My dear," he said, "you belong to me now, you know. You have been

given into my charge, and I am not going to part with you."

She did not resist him or attempt to withdraw her hand, but her

silence was scarcely the silence of acquiescence. When she spoke again

after a long pause, there was a piteous break in her voice.

"Why don't you let me die? I want to die. Why do you hold me back?"

"Why?" said Nick swiftly. "Do you really want me to tell you why?"

But there he checked himself with a sharp, indrawn breath. The next

instant he laid her hand gently down.

"You will know some day, Muriel," he said. "But for the present you

will have to take my reason on trust. I assure you it is a very good

one."

The restraint of his words was marked by a curious vehemence, but this

she was too ill at the time to heed. She turned her face away almost

fretfully.

"Why should I live?" she moaned. "There is no one wants me now."

"That will never be true while I live," Nick answered steadily, and

his tone was the tone of a man who registers a vow.

But again she did not heed him. She had suffered too acutely and

too recently to be comforted by promises. Moreover, she did not want

consolation. She wanted only to shut her eyes and die. In her weakness

she had not fancied that he could deny her this.

And so when presently he roused her by lifting her to resume the

journey, she shed piteous tears upon his shoulder, imploring him to

leave her where she was. He would not listen to her. He knew that it

was highly dangerous to rest so close to habitation, and he would not

risk another day in such precarious shelter.

So for hours he carried her with a strength almost superhuman, forcing

his physical powers into subjection to his will. Though limping badly,

he covered several miles of wild and broken country, deserted for the

most part, almost incredibly lonely, till towards sunrise he found a

resting-place in a hollow high up the side of a mountain, overlooking

a winding, desolate pass.

Muriel was either sleeping or sunk in the stupor of exhaustion. There

was some brandy left in his flask, and he made her take a little. But

it scarcely roused her, and she was too weak to notice that he did not

touch any himself.

All through the scorching day that followed, she dozed and woke in

feverish unrest, sometimes rambling incoherently till he brought her

gravely back, sometimes crying weakly, sometimes making feeble efforts

to pray.

All through the long, burning hours he never stirred away from her. He

sat close to her, often holding her in his arms, for she seemed less

restless so; and perpetually he gazed out with terrible, bloodshot

eyes over the savage mountains, through the long, irregular line of

pass, watching eagle-like, tireless and intent, for the deliverance

which, if it came at all, must come that way. His face was yellow and

sunken, lined in a thousand wrinkles like the face of a monkey; but

his eyes remained marvellously bright. They looked as if they had not

slept for years, as if they would never sleep again. He was at the end

of his resources and he knew it, but he would watch to the very end.

He would die watching.

As the sun sank in a splendour that transfigured the eternally white

mountain-crest to a mighty shimmer of rose and gold, he turned at last

and looked down at the white face pillowed upon his arm. The eyes were

closed. The ineffable peace of Death seemed to dwell upon the quiet

features. She had lain so for a long time, and he had fancied her

sleeping.

He caught his breath, feeling for his flask, and for the first time

his hands shook uncontrollably. But as the raw spirit touched her

lips, he saw her eyelids quiver, and a great gasp of relief went

through him. As she opened her eyes he stayed his hand. It seemed

cruel to bring her back. But the suffering and the half instinctive

look of horror passed from her eyes like a shadow, as they rested upon

him. There was even the very faint flicker of a smile about them.

She turned her face slightly towards him with the gesture of a child

nestling against his breast. Yet though she lay thus in his arms, he

felt keenly, bitterly, that she was very far away from him.

He hung over her, still holding himself in with desperate strength,

not daring to speak lest he should disturb the holy peace that seemed

to be drawing all about her.

The sunset glory deepened. For a few seconds the crags above them

glittered golden as the peaks of Paradise. And in the wonderful

silence Muriel spoke.

"Do you see them?" she said.

He saw that her eyes were turned upon the shining mountains. There was

a strange light on her face.

"See what, darling?" he asked her softly.

Her eyes came back to him for a moment. They had a thoughtful,

wondering look.

"How strange!" she said slowly. "I thought it was--an eagle."

The detachment of her tone cut him to the heart. And suddenly the pain

of it was more than he could bear.

"It is I--Nick," he told her, with urgent emphasis. "Surely you know

me!"

But her eyes had passed beyond him again. "Nick?" she questioned to

herself. "Nick? But this--this was an eagle."

She was drawing away from him, and he could not hold her, could not

even hope to follow her whither she went. A great sob broke from him,

and in a moment, like the rush of an overwhelming flood from behind

gates long closed, the anguish of the man burst its bonds.

"Muriel!" he cried passionately. "Muriel! Stay with me, look at

me, love me! There is nothing in the mountains to draw you. It is

here--here beside you, touching you, holding you. O God," he prayed

brokenly, "she doesn't understand me. Let her understand,--open her

eyes,--make her see!"

His agony reached her, touched her, for a moment held her. She turned

her eyes back to his tortured face.

"But, Nick," she said softly, "I can see."

He bent lower. "Yes?" he said, in a choked voice. "Yes?"

She regarded him with a faint wonder. Her eyes were growing heavy, as

the eyes of a tired child. She raised one hand and pointed vaguely.

"Over there," she said wearily. "Can't you see them? Then perhaps it

was a dream, or even--perhaps--a vision. Don't you remember how

it went? 'And behold--the mountain--was full--of horses--and

chariots--of--fire!' God sent them, you know."

The tired voice ceased. Her head sank lower upon Nick's breast. She

gave a little quivering sigh, and seemed to sleep.

And Nick turned his tortured eyes upon the pass below him, and stared

downwards spellbound.

Was he dreaming also? Or was it perchance a vision--the trick of his

fevered fancy? There, at his feet, not fifty yards from where he sat,

he beheld men, horses, guns, winding along in a narrow, unbroken line

as far as he could see.

A great surging filled his ears, and through it he heard himself shout

once, twice, and yet a third time to the phantom army below.

The surging swelled in his brain to a terrific tumult--a confusion

indescribable. And then something seemed to crack inside his head.

The dark peaks swayed giddily against the darkening sky, and toppled

inwards without sound.

The last thing he knew was the call of a bugle, tense and shrill as

the buzz of a mosquito close to his ear. And he laughed aloud to think

how so small a thing had managed to deceive him.

PART II

CHAPTER VIII

COMRADES

The jingling notes of a piano playing an air from a comic opera

floated cheerily forth into the magic silence of the Simla pines, and

abruptly, almost spasmodically, a cracked voice began to sing. It was

a sentimental ditty treated jocosely, and its frivolity rippled out

into the mid-day silence with something of the effect of a monkey's

chatter. The _khitmutgar_ on the verandah would have looked

scandalised or at best contemptuous had it not been his rôle to

express nothing but the dignified humility of the native servant.

He was waiting for his mistress to come out of the nursery where her

voice could be heard talking imperiously to her baby's _ayah_. He had

already waited some minutes, and he would probably have waited much

longer, for his patience was inexhaustible, had it not been for that

sudden irresponsible and wholly tuneless burst of song. But the

second line was scarcely ended before she came hurriedly forth, nearly

running into his stately person in her haste.

"Oh, dear, Sammy!" she exclaimed with some annoyance. "Why didn't you

tell me Captain Ratcliffe was here?"

She hastened past him along the verandah with the words, not troubling

about his explanation, and entered the room whence the music proceeded

at a run.

"My dear Nick," she cried impulsively, "I had no idea!"

The music ceased in a jangle of wrong notes, and Nick sprang to his

feet, his yellow face wearing a grin of irrepressible gaiety.

"So I gathered, O elect lady," he rejoined, seizing her outstretched

hands and kissing first one and then the other. "And I took the first

method that presented itself of making myself known. So they beguiled

you to Simla, after all?"

"Yes, I had to come for my baby's sake. They thought at first it would

have to be home and no compromise. I'm longing to show him to you,

Nick. Only six months, and such a pet already! But tell me about

yourself. I am sure you have come off the sick list too soon. You

look as if you had come straight from a lengthy stay with the

_bandar-log_."

"_Tu quoque!_" laughed Nick. "And with far less excuse. Only you

manage to look charming notwithstanding, which is beyond me. Do you

know, Mrs. Musgrave, you don't do justice to the compromise? I should

be furious with you if I were Will."

Mrs. Musgrave frowned at him. She was a very pretty woman, possessing

a dainty and not wholly unconscious charm. "Tell me about yourself,

Nick," she commanded. "And don't be ridiculous. You can't possibly

judge impartially on that head, as you haven't the smallest idea as to

how ill I have been. I am having a rest cure now, you must know, and I

don't go anywhere; or I should have come to see you in hospital."

"Good thing you didn't take the trouble," said Nick. "I've been

sleeping for the last three weeks, and I am only just awake."

Mrs. Musgrave looked at him with a very friendly smile. "Poor Nick!"

she said. "And Wara was relieved after all."

He jerked up his shoulders. "After a fashion. Grange was the only

white man left, and he hadn't touched food for three days. If Muriel

Roscoe had stayed, she would have been dead before Bassett got

anywhere near them. There are times when the very fact of suffering

actively keeps people alive. It was that with her."

He spoke briefly, almost harshly, and immediately turned from the

subject. "I suppose you were very anxious about your cousin?"

"Poor Blake Grange? Of course I was. But I was anxious--horribly

anxious--about you all." There was a quiver of deep feeling in Mrs.

Musgrave's voice.

"Thank you," said Nick. He reached out a skeleton finger and laid it

on her arm. "I thought you would be feeling soft-hearted, so I have

come to ask you a favour. Not that I shouldn't have come in any case,

but it seemed a suitable moment to choose."

Mrs. Musgrave laughed a little. "Have you ever found me anything but

kind?" she questioned.

"Never," said Nick. "You're the best pal I ever had, which is the

exact reason for my coming here to-day. Mrs. Musgrave, I want you to

be awfully good to Muriel Roscoe. She needs some one to help her along

just now."

Mrs. Musgrave opened her eyes wide, but she said nothing at once, for

Nick had sprung to his feet and was restlessly pacing the room.

"Come back, Nick," she said at last. "Tell me a little about her. We

have never met, you know. And why do you ask this of me when she is in

Lady Bassett's care?"

"Lady Bassett!" said Nick. He made a hideous grimace, and said no

more.

Mrs. Musgrave laughed. "How eloquent! Do you hate her, too, then? I

thought all men worshipped at that shrine."

Nick came back and sat down. "I nearly killed her once," he said.

"What a pity you didn't quite!" ejaculated Mrs. Musgrave.

Nick grinned. "Sits the wind in that quarter? I wonder why."

"Oh, I hate her by instinct," declared Mrs. Musgrave recklessly,

"though her scented notes to me always begin, 'Dearest Daisy'! She

always disapproved of me openly till baby came. But she has found

another niche for me now. I am not supposed to be so fascinating as I

was. She prefers unattractive women."

"Gracious heaven!" interjected Nick.

"Yes, you may laugh. I do myself." Daisy Musgrave spoke almost

fiercely notwithstanding. "She's years older than I am anyhow, and I

shall score some day if I don't now. Have you ever watched her dance?

There's a sort of snaky, coiling movement runs up her whole body.

Goodness!" breaking off abruptly. "I'm getting venomous myself. I had

better stop before I frighten you away."

"Oh, don't mind me!" laughed Nick. "No one knows better than I

that she is made to twist all ways. She hates me as a cobra hates a

mongoose."

"Really?" Daisy Musgrave was keenly interested. "But why?"

He shook his head. "You had better ask Lady Bassett. It may be

because I had the misfortune to set fire to her once. It is true I

extinguished her afterwards, but I don't think she enjoyed it. It was

a humiliating process. Besides, it spoilt her dress."

"But she is always so gracious to you," protested Daisy.

"Honey-sweet. That's exactly how I know her cobra feelings. And that

brings me round to Muriel Roscoe again, and the favour I have to ask."

Daisy shot him a sudden shrewd glance. "Do you want to marry her?" she

asked him point blank.

Nick's colourless eyebrows went up till they nearly met his colourless

hair. "Dearest Daisy," he said, "you are a genius. I mean to do that

very thing."

Daisy got up and softly closed the window. "Surely she is very young,"

she said. "Is she in love with you?"

She did not turn at the sound of his laugh. She had almost expected

it. For she knew Nick Ratcliffe as very few knew him. The bond of

sympathy between them was very strong.

"Can you imagine any girl falling in love with me?" he asked.

"Of course I can. You are not so unique as that. There isn't a man in

the universe that some woman couldn't be fool enough to love."

"Many thanks!" said Nick. "Then--I may count upon your support, may

I? I know Lady Bassett will put a spoke in my wheel if she can. But I

have Sir Reginald's consent. He is Muriel's guardian, you know. Also,

I had her father's approval in the first place. It has got to be soon,

you see, Daisy. The present state of affairs is unbearable. She will

be miserable with Lady Bassett."

Daisy still stood with her back to him. She was fidgeting with the

blind-cord, her pretty face very serious.

"I am not sure," she said slowly, "that it lies in my power to help

you. Of course I am willing to do my best, because, as you say, we are

pals. But, Nick, she is very young. And if--if she really doesn't love

you, you mustn't ask me to persuade her."

Nick sprang up impulsively. "Oh, but you don't understand," he said

quickly. "She would be happy enough with me. I would see to that. I--I

would be awfully good to her, Daisy."

She turned swiftly at the unwonted quiver in his voice. "My dear

Nick," she said earnestly, "I am sure of it. You could make any woman

who loved you happy. But no one--no one--knows the misery that may

result from a marriage without love on both sides--except those who

have made one."

There was something almost passionate in her utterance. But she turned

if off quickly with a smile and a friendly hand upon his arm.

"Come," she said lightly. "I want to show you my boy. I left him

almost in tears. But he always smiles when he sees his mother."

"Who doesn't?" said Nick gallantly, following her lead.

CHAPTER IX

THE SCHOOL OF SORROW

The aromatic scent of the Simla pines literally encircled and pervaded

the Bassetts' bungalow, penetrating to every corner. Lady Bassett was

wont to pronounce it "distractingly sweet," when her visitors drew

her attention to the fact. Hers was among the daintiest as well as the

best situated bungalows in Simla, and she was pleasantly aware of

a certain envy on the part of her many acquaintances, which added

a decided relish to the flavour of her own appreciation. But

notwithstanding this, she was hardly ever to be found at home except

by appointment. Her social engagements were so numerous that, as she

often pathetically remarked, she scarcely ever enjoyed the luxury of

solitude. As a hostess she was indefatigable, and being an excellent

bridge-player as well as a superb dancer, it was not surprising that

she occupied a fairly prominent position in her own select circle.

In appearance she was a woman of about five-and-thirty--though the

malicious added a full dozen years more to her credit--with fair hair,

a peculiarly soft voice, and a smile that was slightly twisted. She

was always exquisitely dressed, always cool, always gentle, never

hasty in word or deed. If she ever had reason to rebuke or snub, it

was invariably done with the utmost composure, but with deadly effect

upon the offender. Lady Bassett was generally acknowledged to be

unanswerable at such times by all but the very few who did not fear

her.

There were not many who really felt at ease with her, and Muriel

Roscoe was emphatically not one of the number. Her father had

nominated Sir Reginald her guardian, and Sir Reginald, aware of this

fact, had sent her at once to his wife at Simla. The girl had been too

ill at the time to take any interest in her destination or ultimate

disposal. It was true that she had never liked Lady Bassett, that she

had ever felt shy and constrained in her presence, and that, had she

been consulted, she would probably have asked to be sent to England.

But Sir Reginald had been too absorbed in the task before him to spend

much thought on his dead comrade's child at that juncture, and he

had followed the simplest course that presented itself, allowing Nick

Ratcliffe to retain the privilege which General Roscoe himself had

bestowed. Thus Muriel had come at last into Lady Bassett's care, and

she was only just awaking to the fact that it was by no means the

guardianship she would have chosen for herself had she been in a

position to choose. As the elasticity of her youth gradually asserted

itself, and the life began to flow again in her veins, the power to

suffer returned to her, and in the anguish of her awakening faculties

she knew how utterly she was alone. It was in one sense a relief that

Lady Bassett, being caught in the full swing of the Simla season, was

unable to spare much of her society for the suddenly bereaved girl who

had been thrust upon her. But there were times during that period of

dragging convalescence when any presence would have been welcome.

She was no longer acutely ill, but a low fever hung about her, a

species of physical inertia against which she had no strength to

struggle. And often she wondered to herself with a dreary amazement,

why she still lived, why she had survived the horrors of that flight

through the mountains, why she had been thus, as it were, cast up upon

a desert rock when all that had made life good in her eyes had been

ruthlessly swept away. At such times there would come upon her a

loneliness almost unthinkable, a shrinking more terrible than the fear

of death, and the future would loom before her black as night, a blank

and awful desert which she felt she could never dare to travel.

Sometimes in her dreams there would come to her other visions--visions

of the gay world that throbbed so close to her, the world she had

entered with her father so short a time before. She would hear again

the hubbub of laughing voices, the music, the tramp of dancing feet.

And she would start from her sleep to find only a great emptiness, a

listening silence, an unspeakable desolation.

If she ever thought of Nick in those days, it was as a phantom that

belonged to the nightmare that lay behind her. He had no part in her

present, and the future she could not bring herself to contemplate. No

one even mentioned his name to her till one day Lady Bassett entered

her room before starting for a garden-party at Vice-Regal Lodge, a

faint flush on her cheeks, and her blue eyes brighter than usual.

"I have just received a note from Captain Ratcliffe, dear Muriel,"

she said. "I have already mentioned to him that you are too unwell to

think of receiving any one at present, but he announces his intention

of paying you a visit notwithstanding. Perhaps you would like to write

him a note yourself, and corroborate what I have said."

"Captain Ratcliffe!" Muriel echoed blankly, as though the name

conveyed nothing to her; and then with a great start as the blood

rushed to her white cheeks, "Oh, you mean Nick. I--I had almost

forgotten his other name. Does he want to see me? Is he in Simla

still?"

She turned her hot face away with a touch of petulance from the

peculiar look with which Lady Bassett was regarding her. What did she

mean by looking at her so, she wondered irritably?

There followed a pause, and Lady Bassett began to fasten her

many-buttoned gloves.

"Of course, dear," she said gently, at length, "there is not the

smallest necessity for you to see him. Indeed, if my advice were

asked, I should recommend you not to do so; for after such a

terrible experience as yours, one cannot be too circumspect. It is so

perilously easy for rumours to get about. I will readily transmit a

message for you if you desire it, though I think on the whole it would

be more satisfactory if you were to write him a line yourself to say

that you cannot receive him."

"Why?" demanded Muriel, with sudden unexpected energy. She turned back

again, and looked at Lady Bassett with a quick gleam that was almost a

challenge in her eyes. "Why should I not see him? After all, I suppose

I ought to thank him. Besides--besides--why should I not?"

She could not have said what moved her to this unwonted

self-assertion. Had Lady Bassett required her to see Nick she would

probably have refused to do so, and listlessly dismissed the matter

from her mind. But there was that in Lady Bassett's manner which

roused her antagonism almost instinctively. But vaguely understanding,

she yet resented the soft-spoken words. Moreover, a certain

perversity, born of her weakness, urged her. What right had Lady

Bassett to deny her to any one?

"When is he coming?" she asked. "I will see him when he comes."

Lady Bassett yielded the point at once with the faintest possible

shrug. "As you wish, dear child, of course; but I do beg of you to be

prudent. He speaks of coming this afternoon. But would you not like

him to postpone his visit till I can be with you?"

"No, I don't think so," Muriel said, with absolute simplicity.

"Ah, well!" Lady Bassett spoke in the tone of one repudiating all

responsibility. She bent over the girl with a slightly wry smile, and

kissed her forehead. "Good-bye, dearest! I shouldn't encourage him to

stay long, if I were you. And I think you would be wise to call him

Captain Ratcliffe now that you are living a civilised life once more."

Muriel turned her face aside with a species of bored patience that

could scarcely be termed tolerance. She did not understand these

veiled warnings, and she cared too little for Lady Bassett and her

opinions to trouble herself about them. She had never liked her,

though she knew that her father had conscientiously tried to do so for

the sake of his friend, Sir Reginald.

As Lady Bassett went away she rubbed the place on her forehead which

her cold lips had touched. "If she only knew how I hate being kissed!"

she murmured to herself.

And then with an effort she rose and moved wearily across the room to

ring the bell. Since by some unaccountable impulse she had decided to

see Nick, it might be advisable, she reflected, to give her own orders

regarding his visit.

Having done so, she lay down again. But she did not sleep. Sleep was

an elusive spirit in those days. It sometimes seemed to her that she

was too worn out mentally and physically ever to rest naturally again.

Nearly an hour passed away while she lay almost unconsciously

listening. And then suddenly, with a sense of having experienced it

all long before, there came to her the sound of careless footsteps and

of a voice that hummed.

It went through her heart like a sword-thrust as she called to mind

that last night at Fort Wara when she had clung to her father for the

last time, and had heard him bid her good-bye--till they should meet

again.

With a choked sensation she rose, and stood steadying herself by the

back of the sofa. Could she go through this interview? Could she bear

it? Her heart was beating in heavy, sickening throbs. For an instant

she almost thought of escaping and sending word that she was not equal

to seeing any one, as Lady Bassett had already intimated. But even as

the impulse flashed through her brain, she realised that it was

too late. The shadow of the native servant had already darkened the

window, and she knew that Nick was just behind him on the verandah.

With a great, sobbing gasp, she turned herself to meet him.

CHAPTER X

THE EAGLE SWOOPS

He came in as lightly and unceremoniously as though they had parted

but the day before, a smile of greeting upon his humorous, yellow

face, words of careless good-fellowship upon his lips.

He took her hand for an instant, and she felt rather than saw that

he gave her a single, scrutinising glance from under eyelids that

flickered incessantly.

"I see you are better," he said, "so I won't put you to the trouble

of saying so. I suppose dear Lady Bassett has gone to the Vice-Regal

garden-party. But it's all right. I told her I was coming. Did you

have to persuade her very hard to let you see me?"

Muriel stiffened a little at this inquiry. Her agitation was rapidly

subsiding. It left her vaguely chilled, even disappointed. She had

forgotten how cheerily inconsequent Nick could be.

"I didn't persuade her at all," she said coldly. "I simply told her

that I should see you in order--"

"Yes?" queried Nick, looking delighted. "In order--"

To her annoyance she felt herself flushing. With a gesture of

weariness she dismissed the sentence and sat down. She had meant to

make him a brief and gracious speech of gratitude for his past care of

her, but somehow it stuck in her throat. Besides, it was quite obvious

that he did not expect it.

He came and sat down beside her on the sofa. "Let's talk things over,"

he said. "You are out of the doctor's hands, I'm told."

Muriel was leaning back against the cushions. She did not raise her

heavy eyes to answer. "Oh, yes, ever so long ago. I'm quite well, only

rather tired still."

She frowned slightly as she gave this explanation. Though his face

was not turned in her direction, she had a feeling that he was still

closely observant of her.

He nodded to himself twice while he listened and then suddenly he

reached out and laid his hand upon both of hers as they rested in her

lap. "I'm awfully pleased to hear you are quite well," he said, in

a voice that seemed to crack on a note of laughter. "It makes my

business all the easier. I've come to ask you, dear, how soon you can

possibly make it convenient to marry me. To-day? To-morrow? Next week?

I don't of course want to hurry you unduly, but there doesn't seem to

be anything to wait for. And--personally--I abhor waiting. Don't you?"

He turned towards her with the last words. He had spoken very gently,

but there seemed to be an element of humour in all that he said.

Muriel's eyes were wide open by the time he ended. She was staring

at him in blank astonishment. The flush on her face had deepened to

crimson.

"Marry you?" she gasped at length, stammering in her confusion. "I?

Why--why--whatever made you dream of such a thing?"

"I'll tell you," said Nick instantly, and quite undismayed. "I dreamed

that a certain friend of mine was lonely and heart-sick and sad. And

she wanted--horribly--some one to come and take care of her, to cheer

her up, to lift her over the bad places, to give her things which, if

they couldn't compensate for all she had lost, would be anyhow a bit

of a comfort to her. And then I remembered how she belonged to me, how

she had been given to me by her own father to cherish and care for.

And so I plucked up courage to intrude upon her while she was still

wallowing in her Slough of Despair. And I didn't pester her with

preliminaries. We're past that stage, you and I, Muriel. I simply came

to her because it seemed absurd to wait any longer. And I just asked

her humble-like to fix a day when we would get up very early, and

bribe the padre and sweet Lady Bassett to do likewise, and have a

short--very short--service all to ourselves at church, and when it was

over we would just say good-bye to all kind friends and depart. Won't

you give the matter your serious consideration? Believe me, it is

worth it."

He still held her hand closely in his while he poured out his rapid

explanation, and his eyebrows worked up and down so swiftly that

Muriel was fascinated by them. His eyes baffled her completely. They

were like a glancing flame. She listened to his proposal with more

of bewilderment than consternation. It took her breath away without

exactly frightening her. The steady grasp of his hand and the

exceedingly practical tones of his voice kept her from unreasoning

panic; but she was too greatly astounded to respond very promptly.

"Tell me what you think about it," he said gently.

But she was utterly at a loss to describe her feelings. She shook her

head and was silent.

After a little he went on, still quickly, but with less impetuosity.

"It isn't just a sudden fancy of mine--this. Don't think it. There's

nothing capricious about me. Your father knew about it. And because he

knew, he put you in my care. It was his sole reason for trusting you

to me. I had his full approval."

He paused, for her fingers had closed suddenly within his own. She

was looking at him no longer. Her memory had flashed back to that last

terrible night of her father's life. Again she heard him telling her

of the one man to whom he had entrusted her, who would make it his

sole business to save her, who would protect her life with his own,

heard his speculative question as to whether she knew whom he meant,

recalled her own quick reply, and his answer--and his answer.

With a sudden sense of suffocation, she freed her hand and rose. Once

more her old aversion to this man swept over her in a nauseating wave.

Once more there rose before her eyes the dread vision which for many,

many nights had haunted her persistently, depriving her of all

rest, all peace of mind--the vision of a man in his death-struggle,

fighting, agonising, under those merciless fingers.

It was more than she could bear. She covered her eyes, striving to

shut out the sight that tortured her weary brain. "Oh, I don't know if

I can!" she almost wailed. "I don't know if I can!"

Nick did not move. And yet it seemed to her in those moments of

reawakened horror as if by some magnetic force he still held her fast.

She strove against it with all her frenzied strength, but it eluded

her, baffled her--conquered her.

When he spoke at length, she turned and listened, lacking the

motive-power to resist.

"There is nothing to frighten you anyhow," he said, and the tone in

which he said it was infinitely comforting, infinitely reassuring. "I

only want to take care of you; for you're a lonely little soul, not

old enough, or wise enough to look after yourself. And I'll be awfully

good to you, Muriel, if you'll have me."

Something in those last words--a hint of pleading, of coaxing

even--found its way to her heart, as it were, against her will.

Moreover, what he said was true. She was lonely: miserably,

unspeakably lonely. All her world was in ashes around her, and there

were times when its desolation positively appalled her.

But still she stood irresolute. Could she, dared she, take this step?

What if that phantom of horror pursued her relentlessly to the day of

her death? Would she not come in time to shrink with positive loathing

from this man whose offer of help she now felt so strangely tempted in

her utter friendlessness to accept?

It was impossible to answer these tormenting questions satisfactorily.

But there was nothing--so she told herself--to be gained by waiting.

She had no one to advise her, no one really to mind what happened to

her, with the single exception of this friend of hers, who only

wanted to take care of her. And after all, since misery was to be her

portion, what did it matter? Why should she refuse to listen to him?

Had he not shown her already that he could be kind?

A sudden warmth of gratitude towards him stirred in her heart--a tiny

flame springing up among the ashes of her youth. Her horror sank away

like an evil dream.

She turned round with a certain deliberation that had grown upon her

of late, and went back to Nick still seated on the sofa.

"I don't care much what I do now," she said wearily. "I will marry

you, if you wish it, if--if you are quite sure you will never wish you

hadn't."

"Well done!" said Nick, with instant approval. "That's settled then,

for I was quite sure of that ages ago."

He smiled at her quizzically, his face a mask of banter. Of what his

actual feelings were at that moment she had not the faintest idea.

With a piteous little smile in answer she laid her hand upon his knee.

"You will have to be very patient with me," she said tremulously. "For

remember--I have come to the end of everything, and you are the only

friend I have left."

He took her hand into his own again, with a grasp that was warm and

comforting. "My dear," he said very kindly, "I shall always remember

that you once told me so."

CHAPTER XI

THE FIRST FLIGHT

Muriel lay awake for hours that night, going over and over that

interview with Nick till her tired brain reeled. She was not exactly

frightened by this new element that had come into her life. The very

fact of having something definite to look forward to was a relief

after dwelling for so long in the sunless void of non-expectancy. But

she was by no means sure that she welcomed so violent a disturbance at

the actual heart of her darkened existence. She could not, moreover,

wholly forget her fear of the man who had saved her by main force from

the fate she would fain have shared with her father. His patience--his

almost womanly gentleness--notwithstanding, she could not forget

the demon of violence and bloodshed that she knew to be hidden away

somewhere behind that smiling, yellow mask.

She marvelled at herself for her tame surrender, but she felt it to

be irrevocable nevertheless. So broken was she by adversity, that she

lacked the energy to resist him or even to desire to do so. She tried

to comfort herself with the thought that she was carrying out her

father's wishes for her; but this did not take her very far. She could

not help the doubt arising as to whether he had ever really gauged

Nick's exceedingly elusive character.

Tired out, at last she slept, and dreamed that an eagle had caught her

and was bearing her swiftly, swiftly, through wide spaces to his eyrie

in the mountains.

It was a long, breathless flight fraught with excitement and a

nameless exultation that pierced her like pain. She awoke from it

with a cry that was more of disappointment than relief, and started up

gasping to hear horses' hoofs dancing in the compound below her window

to the sound of a cracked, hilarious voice.

She almost laughed as she realised what it was, and in a moment all

her misgivings of the night vanished like wraiths of the darkness.

He had extracted a promise from her to ride with him at dawn, and he

meant to keep her to it. She got up and pulled aside the blind.

A wild view-halloa greeted her, and she dropped it again sharply;

but not before she had seen Nick prancing about the drive on a giddy,

long-limbed Waler, and making frantic signs to her to join him.

Another horse with a side-saddle was waiting, held by a grinning

little _saice_. The sun was already rising rapidly behind the

mountains. She began to race through her toilet at a speed that showed

her to have caught some of the fever of her cavalier's impatience.

She wondered what Lady Bassett thought of the disturbance (Lady

Bassett never rose early), and nearly laughed aloud.

Hastening out at length she found Nick dismounted and waiting for her

by the verandah-steps. He sprang up to meet her with an eager whoop of

greeting.

"Hope you enjoyed my serenade. Come along! There's no time to waste.

Jakko turned red some minutes ago. Were you asleep?"

Muriel admitted the fact.

"And dreaming of me," he rattled on, "as was sweet and proper?"

She did not answer, and he laughed like a boy, rudely but not

insolently.

"Didn't I know it? Jump up! We're going to have a glorious gallop.

I've brought some slabs of chocolate to keep you from starvation.

Ready? Heave ho! My dear girl, you're disgracefully light still. Why

don't you eat more?"

"You're as thin as a herring yourself," Muriel retorted, with a most

unwonted flash of spirit.

He lifted his grinning face to her as she settled herself in the

saddle, and then uncovering swiftly he bent and kissed the black cloth

of her habit, humbly, reverently, as became a slave.

It sent a queer thrill through her, that kiss of his. She felt that

it was in some fashion a revelation; but she was still too blinded by

groping in dark places to understand its message. As they trotted side

by side out of the compound, she knew her face was burning, and turned

it aside that he might not see.

It was a wonderful morning. There was intoxication in the scent of the

pines. The whole atmosphere seemed bewitched. They gave their horses

the rein and raced with the wind through an enchanted world. It was

the wildest, most alluring ride that she had ever known, and when Nick

called a halt at last she protested with a flushed face and sparkling

eyes.

Nevertheless, it was good to sit and watch the rapid transformation

that the sun-god was weaving all about them. She saw the spurs of

Jakko fade from pink to purest amber, and then in the passage of a

few seconds gleam silver in the flood of glory that topped the highest

crests. And her heart fluttered oddly at the sight, while again she

thought of the eagle of her dream, cleaving the wide spaces, and

bearing her also.

She glanced round for Nick, but he had wheeled his horse and was

staring out towards the plains. She wondered what was passing in his

mind, for he sat like a statue, his face turned from her. And suddenly

the dread loneliness of the mountains gripped her as with a chilly

hand. It seemed as if they two were alone together in all the world.

She walked over to him. "I'm cold, Nick," she said, breaking in upon

his silence almost apologetically. "Shall we go?"

He stretched out a hand to her without turning his head, without

speaking. But she would not put her own within it, for she was afraid.

After a long pause he gave a sudden sharp sigh, and pulled his horse

round. "Eh? Cold? We'll fly down to Annandale. There's plenty of

time before us. By the way, I want to introduce you to a friend of

mine--Daisy Musgrave. Ever heard of her? She and Blake Grange are

first cousins. You'll like Daisy. We are great chums, she and I."

Muriel had heard of her from Captain Grange. She had also once upon a

time met Daisy's husband.

"I liked him, rather," she said. "But I thought he must be very

young."

"So he is," said Nick. "A mere infant. He's in the Civil Service, and

works like an ox. Mrs. Musgrave is very delicate. She and the baby

were packed off up here in a hurry. I believe she has a weak heart.

She may have to go home to recruit even now. She doesn't go out at all

herself, but she hopes I will take you to see her. Will you come?"

Muriel hesitated for a moment. "Nick," she said, "are you

telling--everybody--of our--engagement?"

"Of course," said Nick, instantly. "Why not?"

She could not tell him, only she was vaguely dismayed.

"I told Lady Bassett yesterday evening," he went on. "Didn't she say

anything to you?"

"Oh, yes. She kissed me and said she was very pleased." Muriel's

cheeks burned at the recollection.

"How nice of her!" commented Nick. He shot her a sidelong glance.

"Dear Lady Bassett always says and does the right thing at the right

moment. It's her speciality. That's why we are all so fond of her."

Muriel made no response, though keenly aware of the subtlety of this

speech. So Nick disliked her hostess also. She wondered why.

"You see," he proceeded presently, "it is as well to be quite open

about it as we are going to be married so soon. Of course every one

realises that it is to be a strictly private affair. You needn't be

afraid of any demonstration."

It was not that that had induced her feeling of dismay, but she could

not tell him so.

"And Mrs. Musgrave knows?" she questioned.

"I told her first," said Nick. "But you mustn't mind her. She won't

commit the fashionable blunder of congratulating you."

Muriel laughed nervously. She longed to say something careless and

change the subject, but she was feeling stiff and unnatural, and words

failed her.

Nick brought his horse up close to hers.

"There's one thing I want to say to you, Muriel, before we go down,"

he said.

"Oh, what?" She turned a scared face towards him.

"Nothing to alarm you," said Nick, frowning at her quizzically. "I

wanted to say it some minutes ago only I was shy. Look here, dear." He

held out to her a twist of tissue-paper on the palm of his hand. "It's

a ring I want you to wear for me. There's a message inside it. Read it

when you are alone."

Muriel looked at the tiny packet without taking it. She had turned

very white. "Oh, Nick," she faltered at last, "are you--are you--quite

sure?"

"Quite sure of what?" questioned Nick. "Your mind? Or my own?"

"Don't!" she begged tremulously. "I can't laugh over this."

"Laugh!" said Nick sharply. And then swiftly his whole manner changed.

"Yes, it's all right, dear," he said, smiling at her. "Take it, won't

you? I am--quite--sure."

She took it obediently, but her reluctance was still very manifest.

Nick, however, did not appear to notice this.

"Don't look at it now," he said. "Wait till I'm not there. Put it away

somewhere for the present, and let's have another gallop."

She glanced at him as she slipped his gift into her pocket. "Won't you

let me thank you, Nick?" she asked shyly.

"Wait till you've seen it," he returned. "You may not think it worth

it. Ready? One! Two! Three!"

In the scamper that followed, the blood surged back to her face, and

her spirits rose again; but in her secret heart there yet remained a

nameless dread that she was as powerless to define as to expel.

CHAPTER XII

THE MESSAGE

Lady Bassett was still invisible when Muriel returned to the bungalow

though breakfast was waiting for them on the verandah. She passed

quickly through to her room and commenced hasty preparations for a

bath. It had been a good ride, and she realised that, though tired,

she was also very hungry.

She slipped Nick's gift out of the pocket of her riding-habit, but she

would not stop to open it then. That should come presently, when

she had the whole garden to herself, and all the leisure of the long

summer morning before her. She felt that in a sense she owed him that.

But a note that caught her eye lying on the table she paused to open

and hastily peruse. The writing was unfamiliar to her--a dashing,

impetuous scrawl that excited her curiosity.

"Dear Miss Roscoe," it ran,--"Don't think me an unmitigated bore if

you can help it. I am wondering if you would have the real kindness

to waive ceremony and pay me a visit this afternoon. I shall be quite

alone, unless my baby can be considered in the light of a social

inducement. I know that Nick contemplates bringing you to see me, and

so he shall, if you prefer it. But personally I consider that he would

be decidedly _de trop_. I feel that we shall soon know each other so

well that a formal introduction seems superfluous. Let me know your

opinion by word of mouth, or if not, I shall understand. Nick, being

of the inferior species, could hardly be expected to do so, though I

admit that he is more generously equipped in the matter of intellect

than most.--Your friend to be,

"Daisy Musgrave."

Muriel laid down the letter with a little smile. Its spontaneous

friendliness was like a warm hand clasping hers. Yes, she would go,

she decided, as she splashed refreshingly in her bath, and that not

for Nick's sake. She knew instinctively that she was going to discover

a close sympathy with this woman who, though an utter stranger to her,

yet knew how to draw her as a sister. And Muriel's longing for such

human fellowship had already driven her to extremes.

She had the note in her hand when she finally joined Lady Bassett upon

the verandah.

Lady Bassett, though ever-gracious, was seldom at her best in the

morning. She greeted the girl with a faint, wry smile, and proffered

her nearest cheek to be kissed.

"Quite an early bird, dear child!" was her comment. "I should imagine

Captain Ratcliffe's visitation awakened the whole neighbourhood. I

think you must not go out again with him before sunrise. I should not

have advised it this morning if you had consulted me."

Muriel flushed at the softly-conveyed reproof. "It is not the first

time," she said, in her deep voice that was always deepest when

indignation moved her. "We have seen the sun rise together and the

moon rise too, before to-day."

Lady Bassett sighed gently. "I am sure, dearest," she said, "that you

do not mean to be uncouth or unmannerly, far less--that most odious

of all propensities in a young girl--forward. But though my authority

over you were to be regarded as so slight as to be quite negligible, I

should still feel it my duty to remonstrate when I saw you committing

a breach of the conventions which might be grievously misconstrued. I

trust, dear Muriel, that you will bear my protest in mind and regulate

your actions by it in the future. Will you take coffee?"

Muriel had seated herself at the other side of the table, and was

regarding her with wide, dark eyes that were neither angry nor

ashamed, only quite involuntarily disdainful.

After a distinct pause she decided to let the matter drop, reflecting

that Lady Bassett's subtleties were never worth pursuing.

"I am going to see a friend of Nick's this afternoon," she said

presently. "I expect you know her--Mrs. Musgrave."

Lady Bassett's forehead puckered a little. It could hardly be called a

frown. "Have you ever met Mrs. Musgrave?" she asked.

"No, never. But she is Nick's friend, and of course I know her cousin,

Captain Grange, quite well."

Lady Bassett made no comment upon this. "Of course, dear," she said,

"you are old enough to please yourself, but it is not usual, you

know, to plunge into social pleasures after so recent a bereavement as

yours."

The sudden silence that followed this gentle reminder had in it

something that was passionate. Muriel's face turned vividly crimson,

and then gradually whitened to a startling pallor.

"It is the last thing I should wish to do," she said, in a stifled

voice.

Lady Bassett continued, softly suggestive. "I say nothing of your

marriage, dear child. For that, I am aware, is practically a matter

of necessity. But I do think that under the circumstances you can

scarcely be too careful in what you do. Society is not charitably

inclined towards those who even involuntarily transgress its rules.

And you most emphatically are not in a position to do so wilfully."

She paused, for Muriel had risen unexpectedly to her feet. Her eyes

were blazing in her white face.

"Why should you call my marriage a matter of necessity?" she demanded.

"Sir Reginald told me that my father had provided for me."

"Of course, of course, dear." Lady Bassett uttered a faint, artificial

laugh. "It is not a question of means at all. But, there, since you

are so childishly unsophisticated, I need not open your eyes. It is

enough for you to know that there is a sufficiently urgent reason for

your marriage, and the sooner it can take place, the better. But in

the meantime, let me counsel you to be as prudent as possible in all

that you do. I assure you, dear, it is very necessary."

Muriel received this little homily in silence. She did not in the

least understand to what these veiled allusions referred, and

she decided impatiently that they were unworthy of her serious

consideration. It was ridiculous to let herself be angry with Lady

Bassett. As if it mattered in the least what she said or thought! She

determined to pay her projected visit notwithstanding, and quietly

said so, as she turned at length from the table.

Lady Bassett raised no further remonstrance beyond a faint, eloquent

lift of the shoulders. And Muriel went away into the shady compound,

her step firmer and her dark head decidedly higher than usual. She

felt for Nick's gift as she went, with a little secret sensation of

pleasure. After all, why had she been afraid? All girls wore rings

when they became engaged to be married.

Reaching her favourite corner, she drew it forth from its

hiding-place, a quiver of excitement running through her.

She was sitting in the hammock under the pines as she unwrapped it.

The hot sunshine, glinting through the dark boughs overhead, flashed

upon precious stones and dazzled her as the wisp of tissue-paper fell

from her hand.

And in a moment she was looking at an old marquise ring of rubies in

a setting of finely-wrought gold. Her heart gave a throb of sheer

delight at the beauty of the thing. She slipped it impetuously on to

her finger, and held it up to the sunlight.

The rubies shone with a deep lustre--red, red as heart's blood, ardent

as flame. She gazed and gazed with sparkling, fascinated eyes.

Suddenly his words flashed into her mind. A message inside it! She had

been so caught by the splendour of the stones that she had not looked

inside. She drew the ring from her finger, and examined it closely,

with burning cheeks.

Yes, there was the message--three words engraved in minute,

old-fashioned characters inside the gold band. They were so tiny that

it took her a long time to puzzle them out. With difficulty at length

she deciphered the quaint letters, but even then it was some time

before she grasped the meaning that they spelt.

It flashed upon her finally, as though a voice had spoken into her

ear. The words were: OMNIA VINCIT AMOR. And the ring in her hand

was no longer the outward visible sign of her compact. It was a

love-token, given to her by a man who had spoken no word of love.

CHAPTER XIII

THE VOICE OF A FRIEND

"So you didn't bring Nick after all. That was nice of you," said Daisy

Musgrave, with a little, whimsical smile. "I wanted to have you all to

myself. The nicest of men can be horribly in the way sometimes."

She smiled upon her visitor whom she had placed in the easiest chair

and in the pleasantest corner of her drawing-room. Her pretty face was

aglow with friendliness. No words of welcome were needed.

Muriel was already feeling happier than she had felt for many, many

weary weeks. It had been an effort to come, but she was glad that she

had made it.

"It was kind of you to ask me," she said, "though of course I know

that you did it for Nick's sake."

"You are quite wrong," Daisy answered instantly. "He told me about

you, I admit. But after that, I wanted you for your own. And now I

have got you, Muriel, I am not going to stand on ceremony the least

bit in the world. And you mustn't either; but I can see you won't.

Your eyes are telling me things already. I don't get on with stiff

people somehow. Lady Bassett calls me effusive. And I think myself

there must have been something meteoric about my birth star. Doubtless

that is why I agree so well with Nick. He's meteoric, too." She

slipped cosily down upon a stool by Muriel's side. "He's a nice boy,

isn't he?" she said sympathetically. "And is that his ring? Ah, let

me look at it! I think I have seen it before. No, don't take it off!

That's unlucky."

But Muriel had already drawn it from her finger. "It's beautiful," she

said warmly. "Do you know anything about it? It looks as if it had a

history."

"It has," said Daisy. "I remember now. He showed it to me once when I

was staying at his brother's house in England. I know the Ratcliffes

well. My husband used to live with them as a boy. It came from the old

maiden aunt who left him all his money. She gave it to him before she

died, I believe, and told him to keep it for the woman he was sure to

love some day. Nick was an immense favourite of hers."

"But the ring?" urged Muriel.

Daisy was frowning over the inscription within it, but she was fully

aware of the soft colour that had flooded the girl's face at her

words.

"OMNIA VINCIT AMOR," she read slowly. "That is it, isn't it? Ah, yes,

and the history of it. It's rather sad. Do you mind?"

"I am used to sad things," Muriel reminded her, with her face turned

away toward the mountains.

Daisy pressed her hand gently. "It is a French ring," she said. "It

belonged to an aristocrat who was murdered in the Reign of Terror.

He sent it by his servant to the girl he loved from the steps of the

guillotine. I don't know their names. Nick didn't tell me that. But

she was English."

Muriel had turned quickly back. Her interest was aroused. "Yes," she

said eagerly, as Daisy paused. "And she?"

"She!" Daisy's voice had a sudden hard ring in it. "She remained

faithful to him for just six months. And then she married an

Englishman. It was said that she did it against her will. Still she

did it. Luckily for her, perhaps, she died within the year--when her

child was born."

Daisy rose abruptly and moved across the room. "That was more than a

hundred years ago," she said, "and women are as great fools still. If

they can't marry the man they love--they'll marry--anything."

Muriel was silent. She felt as if she had caught sight of something

that she had not been intended to see.

But in a moment Daisy came back, and, kneeling beside her, slipped the

ring on to her finger again. "Yet love conquers all the same, dear,"

she said, passing her arm about the girl. "And yours is going to be

a happy love story. The ring came finally into the possession of the

lady's grandson, and it was he who gave it to Nick's aunt--the maiden

aunt. It was her engagement ring. She never wore any other, and she

only gave it to Nick when her fingers were too rheumatic to wear it

any longer. Her lover, poor boy, was killed in the Crimea. There!

Forgive me if I have made you sad. Death is not really sad, you

know, where there is love. People talk of it as if it conquered love,

whereas it is in fact all the other way round. Love conquers death."

Muriel hid her face suddenly on Daisy's shoulder. "Oh, are you quite

sure?" she whispered.

"I am quite sure, darling." The reply was instant and full of

conviction. "It doesn't need a good woman to be quite sure of that.

Over and over again it has been the only solid thing I have had to

hold by. I've clung to it blindly in outer darkness, God only knows

how often."

Her arms tightened about Muriel, and she fell silent. For minutes the

room was absolutely quiet. Then Muriel raised her head.

"Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you so much."

Her eyes were full of tears as her lips met Daisy's, but she brushed

them swiftly away before they fell.

Daisy was smiling at her. "Come," she said, "I want to show you my

baby. He is just the wee-est bit fractious, as he is cutting a tooth.

The doctor says he will be all right, but he still threatens to send

us both to England."

"And you don't want to go?" questioned Muriel.

Daisy shook her head. "I want to see my cousin Blake," she said

lightly, "when he comes marching home again. Did you hear the rumour

that he is to have the V.C.? They ought to give it to Nick, too, if he

does."

"Oh, I shouldn't think so. Nick didn't do anything. At least," Muriel

stumbled a little, "nothing to be proud of."

Daisy laughed and caught her face between her hands. "Except save his

girl from destruction," she said. "Doesn't that count? Oh, Muriel, I

know exactly what made him want you. No, you needn't be afraid. I'm

not going to tell you. Wild horses sha'n't drag it from me. But he's

the luckiest man in India, and I think he knows it. What lovely hair

you have! I'll come round early on your wedding-day and do it for

you. And what will you wear? It mustn't be a black wedding whatever

etiquette may decree. You look too pathetic in black, and it's a

barbarous custom anyway. I have warned my husband fairly that if he

goes into mourning for me, I'll never speak to him hereafter again.

He is coming up to see us next week, and to discuss our fate with the

doctor. Have you ever met Will?"

"Once," said Muriel. "It was at a dance at Poonah early last summer."

"Ah! When I was at Mahableshwar. He is a good dancer, isn't he? He

does most things well, I think."

Daisy smiled tolerantly as she indicated the photograph of a boy

upon the mantelpiece. "He isn't sixteen," she said; "he is nearly

twenty-eight. Now come and see his son and the light of my eyes." She

linked her arm in Muriel's, and, still smiling, led her from the room.

CHAPTER XIV

THE POISON OF ADDERS

The week that followed that first visit of hers was a gradual renewal

of life to Muriel. She had come through the darkest part of her

trouble, and, thick though the shadows might still lie about her, she

had at last begun to see light ahead. She went again and yet again to

see Daisy, and each visit added to her tranquillity of mind. Daisy was

wonderfully brisk for an invalid, and her baby was an endless source

of interest. Even Lady Bassett could not cavil when her charge spoke

of going to nursery tea at Mrs. Musgrave's. She made no attempt to

check the ripening friendship, though Muriel was subtly aware that she

did not approve of it.

She also went every morning for a headlong gallop with Nick who, in

fact, would take no refusal in the matter. He came not at all to the

house except for these early visits, and she had a good many hours

to herself. But her health was steadily improving, and her loneliness

oppressed her less than formerly. She spent long mornings lying in the

hammock under the pines with only an occasional monkey far above her

to keep her company. It was her favourite haunt, and she grew to look

upon it as exclusively her own. There was a tiny rustic summer-house

near it, which no one ever occupied, so far as she knew. Moreover,

the hammock had been decorously slung behind it, so that even though

a visitor might conceivably penetrate as far as the arbour, it was

extremely unlikely that the hammock would come into the range of

discovery.

Even Lady Bassett had never sought her here, her time being generally

quite fully occupied with her countless social engagements. Muriel

often wondered that that garden on the mountainside in which she

revelled seemed to hold so slight an attraction for its owner. But

then of course Lady Bassett was so much in demand that she had little

leisure to admire the beauties that surrounded her.

Growing daily stronger, Muriel's half-childish panic regarding her

approaching marriage as steadily diminished. She enjoyed her rides

with Nick, becoming daily more and more at her ease with him. They

seldom touched upon intimate matters. She wore his ring, and once

she shyly thanked him for it. But he made no further reference to the

words engraved within it, and she was relieved by his forbearance.

Nick, on his part, was visiting Daisy Musgrave every day, and

sedulously imbibing her woman's wisdom. He had immense faith in her

insight and her intuition, and when she entreated him to move

slowly and without impatience he took a sterner grip of himself and

resolutely set himself to cultivate the virtue she urged upon him.

"You mustn't do anything in a hurry," Daisy assured him, "either

before your marriage or after. She has had a very bad shock, and she

is only just getting over it. You will throw everything back if you

try to precipitate matters. She is asleep, you know, Nick, and it is

for you to waken her, but gradually--oh, very gradually--or she will

start up in the old nightmare terror again. If she doesn't love you

yet, she is very near it. But you will only win her by waiting for

her. Never do anything sudden. Always remember what a child she is,

though she has outgrown her years. And children, you know, though they

will trust those they love to the uttermost, are easily frightened."

Nick knew that she was right. He knew also that he was steadily

gaining ground, and that knowledge helped him more than all Daisy's

counsels. He was within sight, so he felt, of the great consummation

of all his desires, and he was drawing daily nearer.

Their wedding-day was little more than a week away. He had already

made full preparation for it. It was to be as quiet a ceremony as it

was possible to arrange. Daisy Musgrave had promised to be there, and

he expected her husband also. Lady Bassett, whose presence he realised

with a grimace to be indispensable, would complete the wedding-party.

He had arranged to leave Simla directly the service was over, and to

go into Nepal. It would not be his first visit to that most wonderful

country, and it held many things that he desired to show her. He

expected much from that wedding journey, from the close companionship,

the intimacy that must result. He would teach her first beyond all

doubting that she had nothing to fear, and then--then at last, as

the reward of infinite patience, he would win her love. His blood

quickened whenever he thought of it. Alone with her once more among

the mountains, in perfect security, surrounded by the glory of the

eternal snows, so he would win her. They would come back closely

united, equipped to face the whole world hand-in-hand, so joined

together that no shadow of evil could ever come between them any more.

For they would be irrevocably made one. Thus ran the current of

his splendid dream, and for this he curbed himself, mastered his

eagerness, controlled his passion.

On the day that Daisy's husband arrived, he considerately absented

himself from their bungalow, knowing how the boy loved to have his

wife to himself. He had in consequence the whole afternoon at

his disposal, and he contemplated paying a surprise visit to his

betrothed. He had ridden with her that morning, and he did not doubt

that she was to be found somewhere in Lady Bassett's compound. So in

fact she was, and had he carried out his first intention, he would

have explored behind the summer-house and found her in her retreat.

But he did not after all pay his projected visit. A very small matter

frustrated his plans--a matter of no earthly importance, but which he

always looked upon afterwards as a piece of the devil's own handiwork.

He remembered some neglected correspondence, and decided to clear it

off. She would not be expecting him, possibly she might not welcome

his intrusion. And so, in consequence of that rigid self-restraint

that he was practising, he suffered this latter reflection to sway

him in the direction of his unanswered letters, and sat down to his

writing-table with a strong sense of virtue, utterly unsuspicious of

the evil which even at that moment was drawing near imperceptibly but

surely to the girl he loved.

She was lying in her hammock with an unread book on her knees. It

was a slumberous afternoon, making for drowsiness. The mountains were

wrapped in a vague haze, and the whole world was very still. Very far

overhead, the pines occasionally whispered to one another, but below

there was no movement, save when a lizard scuttled swiftly over the

pine-needles, and once when an enquiring monkey-face peered at her

round the red bole of a pine.

It was all very restful, and Muriel was undeniably sleepy. She had

ridden farther than usual with Nick that morning, and it did not take

much to tire her. Lady Bassett had gone to a polo-match, she knew, and

she luxuriated in undisturbed solitude. It lay all about her like

a spell of enchantment. With her cheek pillowed on her hand she

presently floated into serene slumber. It was like drifting down a

tidal river into a summer sea....

Her awakening was abrupt, almost startling. She felt as if some

one had touched her, though she realised In a moment that this was

impossible; for she was still alone. No one was in sight. Only from

the arbour a few feet away there came the sound of voices, and the

tinkle of tea-cups.

Visitors evidently! Lady Bassett had returned and brought back a

couple of guests with her. She frowned impatiently over the discovery,

realising that she was a prisoner unless she elected to show herself.

For her corner behind the summer-house was bounded by the wall of the

compound, and there was no retreat save by the path that led to the

bungalow, and this wound in front of the arbour itself.

It was very annoying, but there was no help for it. She knew very

few people in Simla, and neither of the voices that mingled with Lady

Bassett's was familiar to her. It did not take her long to decide that

she had no desire for a closer acquaintance with their owners. One

was a man's voice, sonorous and weighty, that sounded as if it were

accustomed to propound mighty problems from the pulpit. The other was

a woman's, high-pitched as the wail of a cat on a windy night, that

caused the listening girl to nestle back on her pillow with the

instant resolution to remain where she was until the intruders saw fit

to depart, even if by so doing she had to forego her tea.

She opened her book with an unwarrantable feeling of resentment. Of

course Lady Bassett could not know she was there, and of course she

was at liberty to go whither she would in her own garden. But no one

likes to have their cherished privacy invaded even in ignorance.

And Lady Bassett might surely have concluded that she would be out

somewhere under the pines.

Well, they probably would not stay for long, and she was in no hurry.

With a faint sigh of lingering annoyance she began to read.

But the piercing, feline voice soon pounded flail-like into her

consciousness, scattering her thoughts with ruthless insistence.

"Of course," it asserted, "it was the only thing he could possibly do.

No man with any decent feeling could have done otherwise. But it was a

little hard on him. Surely you agree with me there?"

Lady Bassett's voice, soft and precise, made answer. "Indeed I think

he has behaved most generously in the matter. As you say, it would

have been but a gentleman's duty to make an offer of marriage,

considering all the circumstances. But he went further than that. He

actually insisted upon the arrangement. I suppose he felt bound to

do so as the poor child's father had placed her in his charge. She

is quite unformed still, and is very far from realising her grave

position. Indeed, I scarcely expected her to accept him without the

urgent reason for the match being explained to her; for it is quite

obvious that she does not care for him in that way. Poor child, she is

scarcely old enough to know the true meaning of love. It is very sad

for them both."

A gentle sigh closed the sentence. Muriel's book had slid down upon

a cushion of pine-needles. She had raised herself in the hammock, and

was staring at the rustic woodwork of the summer-house as though she

saw a serpent twining there.

There followed a brief silence. Then came the man's voice, deliberate

and resounding.

"I am sure it must have caused you much anxiety, dear Lady Bassett.

With my knowledge of Nicholas Ratcliffe I confess that I should have

felt very grave misgivings as to whether he were endowed with the

chivalry to fulfil the obligation he had incurred. My esteem for him

has increased fourfold since I heard of his intention to shoulder his

responsibilities thus courageously. I had not deemed him capable of

such a sacrifice. I sincerely trust that he will be given strength to

carry it through worthily."

"I shall not feel really easy till they are married," confessed Lady

Bassett.

"Ah!" The sonorous voice broke in again with friendly reproof.

"But--pardon me--does not that indicate a certain lack of faith, Lady

Bassett? Since the young man has been led to see that the poor girl

has been so sadly compromised, surely we may trust that he will be

enabled to carry out his engagement. I consider it doubly praiseworthy

that he has taken this action on his own initiative. I may tell you in

confidence that I was seriously debating with myself as to whether it

were not my duty to approach him on the subject. But the news of his

engagement relieved me of all responsibility. It is no doubt something

of a sacrifice to a man of his stamp. We can only trust that he will

be duly rewarded."

Here the shrill, feline voice suddenly made itself heard, tripping in

upon the deeper tones without ceremony.

"Oh, but poor Nick! I can't picture him married and done for. He has

always been so gay. Why, look at him with Daisy Musgrave! I know for

a fact that he goes there every day at least, and she refusing to

receive any one else. I call it quite scandalous."

"My dear! My dear!" It was Lady Bassett's turn to reprove. "Not quite

every day surely!"

"I do assure you that isn't the smallest exaggeration," protested

her informant. "I had it from Mrs. Gybbon-Smythe who never misstates

anything. It was she who first told me of this engagement, and she

considered that Nick was positively throwing himself away. A mere

chivalrous fad she called it, and declared that it would simply ruin

his prospects. For it is well known that married officers are almost

invariably passed over by the powers that be. And he is regarded as so

promising too. Really I am almost inclined to agree with her. Just a

little more tea, dear, if I may. Your tea is always so delicious, and

doubly so out here under the pines."

The soft jingling of tea-cups ensued, and through it presently came

Lady Bassett's gentle tones. They sounded as if she were smiling.

"Well, all I can say is, I was unspeakably relieved when I heard that

Captain Ratcliffe had decided to treat the matter as a point of honour

and marry dear Muriel. She is a sweet girl and I am devoted to her,

which made it doubly hard for me. For I should scarcely have dared to

venture, after what has happened, to ask any of my friends to receive

her. Naturally, she shrinks from speaking of that terrible time, but

I understand that she spent no less than three nights alone in

the mountains with him. And that fact in itself would be more than

sufficient to blight any girl's career from a social standpoint. I

often think that the rules of our modern etiquette are very rigid,

though I know well that we cannot afford to disregard them." Again

came that soft, regretful sigh; and then in an apologetic tone, "_You_

will say, I know, that for the good of the community this must be so,

but you are great enough to make allowances for a woman's weakness.

And I must confess that I cannot but feel the pity of it in such a

case as this."

"Indeed, Lady Bassett, I think your feminine weakness does you

credit," was the kind response this elicited. "We must all of us

sympathise most deeply with the poor little wanderer, who, I am well

assured, could not be in better hands than she is at the present

moment. Your protecting care must, I am convinced, atone to her in a

very great measure for all that she has been called upon to undergo."

"So sweet of you to say so!" murmured Lady Bassett. "Words cannot

express my reluctance to explain to her the actual state of affairs,

or my relief that I have been able to avoid doing so with a clear

conscience. Ah! Your cup is empty! Will you let me refill it? No? But

you are not thinking of leaving me yet, surely?"

"Ah, but indeed we must. We are dining with the Boltons to-night, and

going afterwards to the Parkers' dance. You will be there of course?

How delightful! Then we shall soon meet again."

The penetrating voice was accompanied by the sounds of a general move,

and there ensued the usual interchange of compliments at departure,

Lady Bassett protesting that it had been so sweet of her friends to

visit her, and the friends assuring her of the immense pleasure it had

given them to do so. All the things that are never said by people who

are truly intimate with each other were said several times over as

the little party moved away. Their voices receded into the distance,

though they continued for a while to prick through the silence that

fell like a velvet curtain behind them.

Finally they ceased altogether. The summer-house was empty, and an

enterprising monkey slipped down the trunk of a tree and peered in.

But he was a nervous beast, and he had a feeling that the place was

not so wholly devoid of human presence as it seemed. He approached

cautiously, gibbering a little to himself. It looked safe enough, and

there was some dainty confectionery within. But, uneasy instinct still

urging him, he deemed it advisable to peer round the corner of the

summer-house before he yielded to the promptings of a rapacious

appetite.

The next instant his worst fears were realised, and he was scudding up

the nearest tree in a panic.

There, on the ground, face downwards on the pine-needles, lay a human

form. True, it was only a woman lying there. But her silence and her

stillness were eloquent of tragedy even to his monkey-intelligence.

From a safe height he sat and reviled her till he was tired for having

spoilt his sport. Finally, as she made no movement, he forgot

his grievance, and tripped airily away in quest of more thrilling

adventures.

But the woman remained prone upon the ground for a long, long time.

CHAPTER XV

THE SUMMONS

Nick's fit of virtue evaporated with his third letter, and he got

up, feeling that he had spent an unprofitable afternoon. He also

discovered that he was thirsty, and while quenching his thirst he

debated with himself whether he would after all stroll round to the

Musgraves. He and Will were old school-fellows, and the friendship

between them was of the sort that wears forever. He was moreover

dissatisfied with regard to Daisy's appearance, and he wanted to know

the doctor's verdict.

He had just decided to chance his welcome and go, when a note was

brought to him which proved to be from Will himself.

"DEAR OLD NICK," it ran,--"I have been wanting to shake your

hand ever since I heard of your gallant return from the jaws

of death. Well done, old chap, if it isn't a stale sentiment!

"Will you come and dine with us? Do thy diligence, for though

we are neither of us the best of company, we both want you.

The doctor has ordered Daisy and the youngster home. They are

to leave before the _chota-bursat_. Damn the _chota-bursat_,

and the whole beastly show!--Yours ever,

"WILL"

Nick considered this outburst with a sympathetic frown, and at once

despatched an answer in the affirmative. He had almost expected the

news. It had been quite plain to him that Daisy was not making any

progress towards the recovery of her strength. Her quick temperament

would not allow her to be listless, but he had not been deceived. And

he was glad that Will had come up at length to see for himself.

It was horribly unlucky for them both, he reflected, for he knew

that Will could not accompany his wife to England. And the thought

presently flashed across him,--How would it go with him if he ever had

to part with Muriel in that way? Having once possessed her, could

he ever bear to let her go again? Would he not rather relinquish his

profession for her sake, dear though it was to him? He had made her

his own by sheer dogged effort. He had planned for her, fought for

her, suffered for her,--almost he had died for her. Now that she was

his at last, he knew that he could never let her go.

He turned impetuously to a calendar on his writing-table, and ticked

off another day. There were only six left before his wedding-day. He

counted them with almost savage exultation. Finally he tossed down the

pencil with a sudden, quivering laugh, and stood up with wide-flung

arms. She was his--his--his! No power or force of circumstance could

ever come between them now. He would trample every obstacle underfoot.

But there were no obstacles left. He had overcome them all. He had won

her fairly; and the reward of patience was very near.

For the first time he slackened the bonds of his self-restraint;

and instantly the fire of his passion leapt up, free and fierce,

overflowing its confines in a wide-spread, molten stream that carried

all before it.

When later he departed to keep his engagement, he was as a man

treading upon air. Not a dozen yards from the gate one of Lady

Bassett's servants met him and presented a note. He guessed it was

from Muriel, and the blood rose in a hot wave to his head and pounded

at his temples as he opened it. It was the first she had ever written

to him.

"I must see you at once,--M."

That was all. He dismissed the waiting native, and returned to his

room. There he wrote a note to Will Musgrave warning him that he had

been delayed.

Then he suddenly straightened himself and stood tense. Something had

happened. He was sure of it. That urgent summons rang in his brain

like a cry for help. Some demand was about to be made upon him, a

demand which he might find himself ill-equipped to meet. He was not

lacking in courage. He could meet adversity without a quiver. But for

once he was not sure of himself. He was not prepared to resist any

sudden strain that night.

Several minutes passed before he moved. Then, glancing down, he

saw her message fast gripped in his hand. With a swift, passionate

movement he carried the paper to his lips. And he remembered suddenly

how he had once held her hand there and breathed upon the little cold

fingers to give them life. He had commanded himself then. Was he any

the less his own master now? And was he fool enough to destroy all in

a moment that trust of hers which he had built up so laboriously? He

felt as if a fiend had ensnared him, and with a fierce effort he broke

free. Surely he was torturing himself in vain. She had only sent for

him to explain that she could not ride with him in the morning, or

some other matter equally trifling. He would go to her at once since

she had desired it, and set her mind at rest on whatever subject

happened to be troubling it.

And so with steady tread he left the house once more. She had called

him for the first time. He would not keep her waiting.

CHAPTER XVI

THE ORDEAL

The drawing-room was empty when he entered it, the windows standing

flung wide to the night. Strains of dance music were wafted in from

somewhere lower down the hill, and he guessed that Lady Bassett would

be from home. The pine-trees of the compound stood black and silent.

There seemed to be a hush of expectancy in the air.

He stood with his back to the room and his face to the mountains. The

moon was still below the horizon, but stars blazed everywhere with a

marvellous brightness. It was a night for dreams, and he thought with

a quickening heart of the nights that were coming when they two would

be alone once more among the hills, no longer starved and fleeing

for their lives, but wandering happily together in an enchanted world

where the past was all forgotten, and the future gleamed like the

peaks of Paradise.

At sound of a quiet footfall, he turned back into the room. Muriel had

entered and was closing the door behind her. At first sight he fancied

that she was ill, so terribly did her deep mourning and heavy hair

emphasise her pallor. But as she moved forward he reassured himself.

It was growing late. Doubtless she was tired.

He went impetuously to meet her, and in a moment he had her hands

in his; but they lay in his grasp cold and limp, with no responding

pressure. Her great eyes, as they looked at him, were emotionless

and distant, remote as the lights of a village seen at night across a

far-reaching plain. She gave him no word or smile of welcome.

A sudden dark suspicion flashed through his brain, and he drew her

swiftly to the light, looking at her closely, searchingly.

"What have you been doing?" he said.

She fathomed his suspicion, and faintly smiled. "Nothing--nothing

whatever. I have never touched opium since the night you--"

He cut in sharply, as if the reminiscence hurt him. "I beg your

pardon. Well, what is it then? There's something wrong."

She did not contradict him. Merely with a slight gesture of weariness,

she freed herself and sat down.

Nick remained on his feet, looking down at her, waiting grimly for

enlightenment.

It did not come very readily. Seconds had passed into minutes before

she spoke, and then her words did not bear directly upon the matter in

hand.

"I hope it was quite convenient to you to come to-night. I was a

little afraid you would have an engagement."

He remembered the urgency of her summons and decided that she spoke

thus conventionally to gain time. On another occasion he might

have humoured such a whim, but to-night it goaded him almost beyond

endurance. Surely they had passed that stage, he and she.

With an effort he controlled himself, but it sounded in his voice as

he made reply.

"My engagement to you stands before any other. What is it you want to

say to me?"

Her expression changed slightly at his words, and a shade of

apprehension flitted across her face. She threw him a swift upward

glance, half-scared, half-questioning. Unconsciously her hands locked

themselves together.

"I want you not to be vexed, Nick," she said, in a low voice.

He made an abrupt movement. "My dear girl, don't be silly. What's the

trouble? Let me hear it and have done."

His tone was reassuring. She looked up at him with more confidence.

"Yes, I am silly," she acknowledged. "I'm perfectly idiotic to fancy

for a moment that it can make any difference to you. Nick, I have been

thinking things over seriously, and--and--I find that I can't marry

you after all. I hope you won't mind, though of course--" she uttered

a little laugh that was piteously insincere--"I know you will feel

bound to say you do. But--anyhow--you needn't say it to me, because I

understand. I thought it was only fair to let you know at once."

"Thank you," said Nick, and there was that in his voice which was like

the sudden snapping of a tense spring.

She saw his hands clench with the words, and an overwhelming sense

of danger swept over her. Instinctively she started to her feet. If a

tiger had leapt in upon her through the window she could not have been

more terrified.

Nick took a single stride towards her, and she stopped as if struck

powerless. His face was the face she had once seen bent over a man in

his death-agony, convulsed with passion, savage, merciless,--the face

of a devil.

She shrank away from him in nameless terror, gasping and

panic-stricken. "Nick," she whispered, "are you--mad?"

He answered her jerkily in a strangled voice that was like the snarl

of a beast. "Yes--I am mad. If you try to run away from me now--I

won't answer for myself."

She gazed at him with widening eyes. "But, but--" she faltered--"I--I

don't understand. Oh, Nick, you frighten me!"

It was the cry of a child, lost, bewildered, piteous. Had she

withstood him, had she sought to escape, the demon in him would have

burst the last restraining bond, and have shattered in one moment of

unshackled violence all the chivalrous patience which during the last

few weeks he had spent his whole strength to achieve.

But that cry of desolation pierced straight through his madness,

cutting deeper than reproach or protest, wounding him to the heart.

With a sound that was half-sob, half-groan, he turned his back upon

her and covered his face.

For a space of seconds he stood so, not moving, seeming not even to

breathe. And Muriel, steadying herself by the mantelpiece, watched him

with a panting heart.

Then abruptly, moving with a quick, light tread that made no sound, he

crossed the room to one of the wide-flung windows and stopped there.

From across the quiet garden there came the strains of "The Blue

Danube," fitful, alluring, plaintive--that waltz to which countless

lovers have danced and wooed and whispered through the years. Muriel

longed intensely to shut it out, to stop her ears, to make some noise

to drown it. Her nerves were all on edge, and she felt as if its

persistent sweetness would drive her mad.

Surely Nick felt the same; but if he did, he made no sign. He stood

without movement with his face to the night, gripping the woodwork of

the window with both hands, every bone of them standing out in sharp,

skeleton lines.

She watched him, fascinated, for a long time, but he did not stir from

his tense position. He seemed to have utterly forgotten her presence

in the room behind him. And still that maddening waltz kept on and on

and on till she felt sick and dazed with listening to it. It seemed as

if for the rest of her life she would never again be free from those

haunting strains.

The soft shutting of the window made her start and quiver. Nick had

moved at last, and her heart began to throb thick and fast as he

turned. She tried to read his face, but she could not even see

it. There was a swimming mist before her eyes, and her limbs felt

powerless, heavy as lead.

In every nerve, she felt him drawing near, and in an agony of

helplessness she awaited him, all the surging horror of that night

when he had drugged her rushing back upon her with tenfold force.

Again she saw him as she had seen him then, monstrous, silent,

terrible, a man of superhuman strength, whose mastery appalled

her. Again in desperate fear she shrank from him, seeking wildly,

fruitlessly, for a way of escape.

And then came the consciousness of his arm about her, supporting her;

and the voice that had quieted her wildest delirium was speaking in

her ear.

"The goblins are all gone, dear," she heard him say. "Don't be

frightened."

He led her gently to a sofa and made her sit down, bending over her

and softly rubbing her cold cheek.

"Tell me when you're better," he said, "and we'll talk this thing out.

But don't be frightened anyway. It's all right."

The tenderness of voice and touch, the sudden cessation of all

tension, the swift putting to flight of her fear, all combined to

produce in her a sense of relief so immense that the last shred of her

self-control went from her utterly. She laid her head down upon the

cushions and burst into a storm of tears.

Nick's hand continued to stroke and soothe, but he said no more while

her paroxysm of weeping lasted. He who was usually so ready of speech,

so quick to console, found for once no words wherewith to comfort her.

Only when her distress had somewhat spent itself, he bent a little

lower and dried her tears with his own handkerchief, his lips

twitching as he did it, his eyes flickering so rapidly that it was

impossible to read their expression.

"There!" he said at last. "There's nothing to cry about. Finish what

you were saying when I interrupted you. I think you were in the middle

of throwing me over, weren't you? At least, you had got through that

part of it, and were just going to tell me why."

His tone was reassuringly flippant.

Looking up at him, she saw the old kindly, quizzical look on his face.

He met her eyes, nodding shrewdly.

"Let's have it," he said, "straight from the shoulder. You're tired of

me, eh?"

She drew back from him, but with no gesture of shrinking. "I'm tired

of everything--everything," she said, a little passionate quiver in

her voice. "I wish--I wish with all my heart, you had left me to die."

"Is that the grievance?" said Nick. He sat down on the head of the

sofa, and drove his fist into the cushion. "If I could explain things

to you, I would. But you're such a chicken, aren't you, dear, and

about as easily scared? Since when have you harboured this grudge

against me?"

The gentle banter of his tone did not deceive her into imagining that

she could trifle with him, nor was she addicted to trifling. She

made answer with a certain warmth of indignation that seemed to have

kindled on its own initiative and wholly without her volition.

"I haven't, I don't. I'm not so absurd. It isn't that at all."

"You're not tired of me?" queried Nick.

"No."

"If I were to die to-morrow for instance--and there's no telling, you

know, Muriel,--you'd be a little sorry?"

Again, though scarcely aware of it, she resented the question. "Why do

you ask me that? Of course I should be sorry."

"Of course," acquiesced Nick. "But all the king's horses and all the

king's men wouldn't bring me back again. That's the worst of being

mortal. You can't dance at your own funeral."

"What do you mean?" There was a note of exasperation in Muriel's

voice. She saw that he had an object in view, but his method of

attaining it was too tortuous for her straightforward understanding.

He explained himself with much patience. His mood had so completely

changed that she could barely recall to mind the vision that had so

appalled her but a few minutes before.

"What I mean is that it's infernal to think that some one may be

shedding precious tears on your grave and you not there to see.

I've often wondered if one could get a ticket of leave for such an

occasion." He smiled down at her with baffling directness. "I should

value those tears unspeakably," he said.

Muriel made a slight movement of impatience. The discussion seemed to

her inconsequent and unprofitable.

Nick began to enumerate his points. "You're not tired of me--though

I see I'm boring you hideously; put up with it a little longer, I've

nearly finished--and you'd shed quite a respectable number of tears

if I were to die young. Yes, I am young though as ugly as Satan. I

believe you think I'm some sort of connection, don't you? Is that why

you don't want to marry me?"

He put the question with startling suddenness, and Muriel glanced up

quickly, but was instantly reassured. He was no more formidable at

that moment than a grinning schoolboy. Still she did not feel wholly

at her ease with him. She had a curious suspicion that he was in some

fashion testing her.

"No," she answered, after a moment. "It is nothing of that sort."

"Quite sure there is a reason?" he asked quizzically.

Her white cheeks flushed. "Yes, of course. But--I would rather not

tell you what it is."

"Quite so," said Nick. "I suppose that also is 'only fair'?"

Her colour deepened. He made her feel unaccountably ashamed. "I will

tell you if you wish to know," she said reluctantly. "But I would

rather not."

Nick made an airy gesture. "Not for the world! My intelligence

department is specially fitted for this sort of thing. Besides, I know

exactly what happened. It was something like this." He passed his

hand over his face, then turned to her with a faint, wry smile so

irresistibly reminiscent of Lady Bassett that Muriel gasped with a

sudden hysterical desire to laugh.

He silenced her by beginning to speak in soft, purring accents. "You

know, darling Muriel, I have never looked upon Nicholas Ratcliffe as

a marrying man. He is such a gay butterfly." (This with an indulgent

shake of the head.) "Indeed, I have heard dear Mrs. Gybbon-Smythe

describe him as a shocking little flirt. And they say he is fond of

his glass too, but let us hope this is an exaggeration. I know for a

fact that he has a very violent temper, and this may have given

rise to the rumour. I assure you, dearest, he is quite formidable,

notwithstanding his size. But there, if I tell you any more you will

think I am prejudiced against him, whereas we are really the greatest

friends--the greatest possible friends. I only thought it kind to warn

you not to expect too much. It is a mistake so many young girls make,

and I want you to be as happy as you can, poor child."

Muriel was laughing helplessly when he stopped. The mimicry of voice

and action was so perfect, so free from exaggeration, so sublimely

spontaneous.

Nick did not laugh with her. Behind his mask of banter he was

watching, watching closely. He had clad himself in jester's garb to

feel for the truth. Perhaps she realised something of this as

she recovered herself, for again that glance, half-questioning,

half-frightened, flashed up at him as she made reply.

"No, Nick. She never said that, indeed. I wouldn't have cared if she

had. It was only--only--"

"I know," he broke in abruptly. "If it wasn't that, there is only one

thing left that it could have been. I don't want you to tell me. It's

as plain as daylight. Let me tell you instead. It's all for the sake

of your poor little personal pride. I know--yes, I know. They've been

throwing mud at you, and it's stuck. You'd sooner die than marry me,

wouldn't you? But what will you do if I refuse to set you free?"

She turned suddenly crimson. "You--you wouldn't, Nick! You couldn't!

You haven't--the right."

"Haven't I?" said Nick, with an odd smile. "I thought I had."

He looked down at her, and a queer little flame leaped up like an evil

spirit in his eyes, flickered an instant, and was gone. "I thought I

had," he said again, in a different tone. "But we won't quarrel about

that. Tell me what you want to do."

Her answer came with a vehemence that perhaps he had hardly expected.

"Oh, I want to get away--right away. I want to go home. I--I hate this

place."

"And every one in it?" suggested Nick.

"Almost." Muriel spoke recklessly, even defiantly. She was fighting

for her freedom, and the battle was infinitely harder than she had

anticipated.

He nodded. "The sole exception being Mrs. Musgrave. Do you know Mrs.

Musgrave is going home? You would like to go with her."

Muriel looked at him with sudden hope. "Alone with her?" she said.

"Oh, I'm not going," declared Nick. "I'm going to Khatmandu for my

honeymoon."

The hope died out of Muriel's eyes. "Don't--jeer at me, Nick," she

said, in a choked voice. "I can't bear it."

"Jeer!" said Nick. "I!" He reached down suddenly and took her hand.

The light sparkled on the ring he had given her, and he moved it

slowly to and fro watching it.

"I am going to ask you to take it back," she said.

He did not raise his eyes. "And I am going to refuse," he answered

promptly. "I don't say you must wear it, but you are to keep it--not

as a bond, merely in remembrance of a promise which you will make to

me."

"A promise--" she faltered.

Still he did not look up. He was watching the stones with eyes

half-shut.

"Yes," he said, after a moment. "I will let you go on the sole

condition that you give me this promise."

She began to tremble a little. "What is it?" she whispered.

He glanced at her momentarily, but his expression was enigmatical. She

felt as if his look lighted and dwelt upon something beyond her.

"Simply this," he said. "You'll laugh, I daresay; but if you are able

to laugh it won't hurt you to promise. I want your word of honour that

if you ever change your mind about marrying me, you will come to me

like a brave woman and tell me so."

Thus, quite calmly, he made known to her his condition, and in the

amazed silence with which she received it he continued to flash hither

and thither the wonderful rays that shone from the gems upon her hand.

He did not appear to be greatly concerned as to what her answer would

be. Simply with an inscrutable countenance he waited for it.

"Is it a bargain?" he asked at last.

She started with an involuntary gesture of shrinking. "Oh, no, Nick!

How could I promise you that? You know I shall never change my mind."

He raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. "That isn't the point under

discussion. If it's an impossible contingency, it costs you the less

to promise."

He kept her hand in his as he said it, though she fidgeted to be free.

"Please, Nick," she said earnestly, "I would so much rather not."

"You prefer to marry me at once?" he asked, and suddenly it seemed to

her that this was the alternative to which he meant to drive her.

She rose in a panic, and he rose also, still keeping her hand. His

face looked like a block of yellow granite.

"Must it--must it--be one or the other?" she panted.

He looked at her under flickering eyelids. "I have said it," he

remarked.

Her resistance flagged, sank, rose again, and finally died away. After

all, why should she hesitate? What was there in such an undertaking as

this to send the blood so wildly to her heart?

"Very well," she said faintly at last. "I promise. But--but--I never

shall change my mind, Nick--never--never."

He was still looking at her with veiled, impenetrable eyes. He paid no

attention to her protest. It was as if he had not so much as heard it.

"You've done your part," he said. "Now hear me do mine. I swear to

you--before God--that I will never marry you unless you ask me to."

He bent with the words, and solemnly, reverently, he pressed his lips

upon the hand he held.

Muriel waited, half-frightened still, and wholly awestruck. She did

not know Nick in this mood.

But when he straightened himself again, the old whimsical smile was on

his face, and she breathed a sigh of relief. With a quick, caressing

movement he took her by the shoulders.

"That's over then," he said lightly. "Turn over and start another

page. Go back to England, go back to school; and let them teach you to

be young again."

They were his last words to her. Yet an instant longer he waited, and

very deep down in her heart something that was hidden there stirred

and quivered as a blind creature moves at the touch of the sun. It

awoke a vague pain within her, that was all.

The next moment Nick had turned upon his heel and was departing.

She heard him humming a waltz tune under his breath as he went away

with his free British swagger. And she knew with no sense of elation

that she had gained her point.

For good or ill he had left her, and he would not return.

PART III