ded to contemplate.

"Oh, look here, Merryon!" The colonel lost his temper after his own
precipitate fashion. "Don't be such a confounded fool! Take a
fortnight's leave--I can't spare you longer--and go back to the Hills
with her! Make her settle down with my wife at Shamkura! Tell her you'll
beat her if she doesn't!"

Merryon's grim face softened a little. "Thank you very much, sir! But
you can't spare me even for so long. Moreover, that form of punishment
wouldn't scare her. So, you see, it would come to the same thing in the
end. She is determined to face what I face for the present."

"And you're determined to let her!" growled the colonel.

Merryon shrugged his shoulders.

"You'll probably lose her," the colonel persisted, gnawing fiercely at
his moustache. "Have you considered that?"

"I've considered everything," Merryon said, rather heavily. "But she
came to me--through that inferno. I can't send her away again. She
wouldn't go."

Colonel Davenant swore under his breath. "Let me talk to her!" he said,
after a moment.

The ghost of a smile touched Merryon's face. "It's no good, sir. You can
talk. You won't make any impression."

"But it's practically a matter of life and death, man!" insisted the
colonel. "You can't afford any silly sentiment in an affair like this."

"I am not sentimental," Merryon said, and his lips twitched a little
with the words. "But all the same, since she has set her heart on
staying, she shall stay. I have promised that she shall."

"You are mad," the colonel declared. "Just think a minute! Think what
your feelings will be if she dies!"

"I have thought, sir." The dogged note was in Merryon's voice again. His
face was a mask of impenetrability. "If she dies, I shall at least have
the satisfaction of knowing that I made her happy first."

It was his last word on the subject. He departed, leaving the colonel
fuming.

That evening the latter called upon Mrs. Merryon. He found her sitting
on her husband's knee smoking a Turkish cigarette, and though she
abandoned this unconventional attitude to receive her visitor, he had a
distinct impression that the two were in subtle communion throughout his
stay.

"It's so very nice of you to take the trouble," she said, in her
charming way, when he had made his most urgent representations. "But
really it's much better for me to be with my husband here. I stayed at
Shamkura just as long as I could possibly bear it, and then I just had