He seemed engrossed in thought.

He went with her to her room, and there bade her good-night, observing
that he had work to do and might be late.

"It is already late," she said. "Don't be long! I shall only lie awake
till you come."

He frowned at her. "I shall be very angry if you do."

"I can't help that," she said. "I can't sleep properly till you come."

He looked her in the eyes. "You're not nervous? You've got Peter."

"Oh, I am not in the least nervous on my own account," she told him.

"You needn't be on mine," he said.

She laughed, but her lips were piteous. "Well, don't be long anyway!"
she pleaded. "Don't forget I am waiting for you!"

"Forget!" he said. For an instant his hold upon her was passionate. He
kissed her fiercely, blindly, even violently; then with a muttered word
of inarticulate apology he let her go.

She heard him stride away down the passage, and in a few moments Peter
came and very softly closed the door. She knew that he was there on
guard until his master should return.

She sat down with a beating heart and leaned back with closed eyes. A
heavy sense of foreboding oppressed her. She was very tired, but yet she
knew that sleep was far away. Just as once she had felt a dread that was
physical on behalf of Ralph Dacre, so now she felt weighed down by
suspense and loneliness. Only now it was a thousand times magnified, for
this man was her world. She tried to picture to herself what it would
have meant to her had that shot in the jungle slain him instead of
Captain Ermsted. But the bare thought was beyond endurance. Once she
could have borne it, but not now--not now! Once she could have denied
her love and fared forth alone into the desert. But he had captured her,
and now she was irrevocably his. Her spirit pined almost unconsciously
whenever he was absent from her. Her body knew no rest without him. From
the moment of his leaving her, she was ever secretly on fire for his
return.

Had they been in England she knew that it would have been otherwise. In
a calm and temperate atmosphere she could have attained a serene,
unruffled happiness. But India, fevered and pitiless, held her in
scorching grip. She dwelt as it were on the edge of a roaring furnace
that consumed some victims every day. Her life was strung up to a pitch
that frightened her. The very intensity of the love that Everard Monck
had practically forced into being within her was almost more than she
could bear. It