o on together.' Her
distress seemed to make things simple again. It was as if the cloud that
hung over them had melted as she wept, and lifted, and drifted a little
further on. For the moment, naturally, nothing mattered except that she
should be comforted. As she walked by his side shaken with her effort
at self-control, he had to resist the impulse to touch her. His hand
tingled to do its part in soothing her, his arm ached to protect her,
while he vaguely felt an element of right, of justice, in her tears;
they were in a manner his own. What he did was to turn and ask the syce
following if he had loosened the Turk's saddle-girths.

'I shall be better--in a moment,' Madeline said, and he answered, 'Of
course'; but they walked on and said nothing more until the road ran out
from under the last deodar and round the first bare boulder that marked
the beginning of the Ladies' Mile. It lay rolled out before them, the
Ladies' Mile, sinuous and grey and empty, along the face of the cliff;
they could see from one end of it to the other. It was the bleak side of
Jakko; even tonight there was a fresh springing coldness in it blowing
over from the hidden snows behind the rims of the nearer hills. Madeline
held up her face to it, and gave herself a moment of its grateful
discipline.

'I have been as foolish as possible,' she said, 'as foolish as possible.
I have distressed you. Well, I couldn't help it--that is all there is to
be said. Now if you will tell me--what is in your mind--what you spoke
of writing--I will mount again and go home. It doesn't matter--I know
you didn't mean to be unkind.' Her lip was trembling again, and he knew
it, and dared not look at it.

'How can you ask me to tell you--miserable things!' he exclaimed. 'How
can I find the words? And I have only just been told--I can hardly
myself conceive it--'

'I am not a child in her teens that my ears should be guarded from
miserable things. I have come of age, I have entered into my inheritance
of the world's bitterness with the rest. I can listen,' Madeline said.
'Why not?'

He looked to her with grave tenderness. 'You think yourself very old,
and very wise about the world,' he said; 'but you are a woman, and you
will be hurt. And when I think that a little ordinary forethought on my
part would have protected you, I feel like the criminal I am.'

'Don't make too much of it,' she said, simply. 'I have a presentiment--'

'I'll tell you,' Innes said, slowly