back there straight at him, before my--before all
the others. That's why I like you so!--But you must leave that horrid,
lying fellow to me."

All unaware, she had led him along the blinding white wall of the
Forrester compound, and halted in the hot shadow that lay under the
tiled gateway. As though timidly, her hand stole up and rested on
his forearm.

"So sorry." The confined space, narrow and covered, gave to her voice a
plaintive ring. "That's twice you protected me, and I hurt you.--You
_are_ different. This doesn't happen between people, often. When you
did--that, for me, yesterday, didn't it seem different and rather
splendid, and--like a book?"

"It seemed nonsense," replied Rudolph, sturdily. "The heat. We were
fools."

She laughed again, and at close range watched him from under consciously
drooping lashes that almost veiled a liquid brilliancy. Everywhere the
cicadas kept the heat vibrating with their strident buzz. It recalled
some other widespread mist of treble music, long ago. The trilling of
frogs, that had been, before.

"You dear, brave boy," she said slowly. "You're so honest, too. I'm not
ungrateful. Do you know what I'd like--Oh, there's the _amah!"_

She drew back, with an impatient gesture.

"That stupid, fat Mrs. Earle's waiting for me.--I hate to leave you."
The stealthy brightness of her admiration changed to a slow, inscrutable
appeal. "Don't forget. Haven't you--a better friend?" And with an
instant, bold, and tantalizing grimace, she had vanished within.

* * * * *

To his homeward march, her cicadas shrilled the music of fifes. He, the
despised, the man to spare, now cocked up his helmet like fortune's
minion, dizzy with new honors. Nobody had ever praised him to his face.
And now she, she of all the world, had spoken words which he feared and
longed to believe, and which even said still less than her searching and
mysterious look.

On the top of his exultation, he reached the nunnery, and entered his
big, bare living-room, to find Heywood stretched in a wicker chair.

"Hallo, Rudie! I've asked myself to tiffin," drawled the lounger, from a
little tempest of blue smoke, tossed by the punkah. "How's the fair
Bertha?--Mausers all right? And by the way, did you make that inventory
of provisions?"

Rudolph faced him with a sudden conviction of guilt, of treachery to a
leader.

"Yes," he stammered; "I--I'll get it for you."

He passed into his b