ge, kindly, worried
face.

"How many times have you met?"

"Only four or five times in all," says Beauvayse. "I'd set eyes on her
twice before I was introduced. I couldn't rest for thinking about her. She
drew me and drew me.... And when we did meet, there was no strangeness
between us, even from the first minute. She just seemed waiting for what I
had to own up. And when I spoke, I--I seemed to be only saying what I was
meant to say.... From the beginning of the world! And you'd understand
better if you'd seen her near----"

"I have seen her in the distance, walking with the Mother-Superior of the
Convent. A tall, slight girl. Looks like a lady," says Bingo, "and has
jolly hair."

"It's the colour of dead leaves in autumn sunshine or a squirrel's back,"
raves the boy, "and she's beautiful, Wrynche. My God! so beautiful that
your heart stops beating when you look into her face, and nearly jumps out
of your body when a fold of her gown brushes against you. And I swear
there's no other woman for me in life or death!"

"I shouldn't be in such a cast-iron hurry to swear if I were you," Captain
Bingo replies judicially. "And--I've heard you say the same about the
others----"

"It was never true before. And she's a lady," pleads Beauvayse hotly. "A
lady in manners, and education, and everything. The sort of girl one
respects; the sort of girl one can talk to about one's mother and
sisters----"

"You'd talk about your mother to a Kaffir washerwoman," Captain Bingo
blurts out. "Better you should, than go hanging about a Convent-bred
schoolgirl and telling her you'll never care for anybody else, when you've
got a legal wife, and, for all you know, a family of twins at home in
England."

The footstool, impelled by a scientific lift of Beauvayse's toe, flies to
the other end of Nixey's verandah. "Is one mistake to ruin a man's life?
I'll get a divorce from my wife. I will, by Heaven!"

"You told me not to maunder just now," says Bingo, with ponderous sarcasm.
"Who is the maunderer, I'd like to know? By the Living Tinker, I should
have thought that this siege life would have put iron into a man's blood
instead of--of Creme de Menthe. Are you takin' those dashed morphia
tabloids of Taggart's for bad-water collywobbles again? Yes? I thought as
much. Chuck 'em to the aasvogels; stick to your work--you can't complain
of its lackin' interest or variety--and let this girl alone. She's a lady,
and the adopted daughter of an ol