pure from all embarrassment or
surprise. It was as if he had foreseen that she would do this.

"You're ill," he said. "Go down-stairs; I'll come to you."

"I'm not ill and I'm not mad. Please shut that door."

He shut it.

"Won't you sit down?"

She smiled and sat down on his bed, helpless and heedless of herself.
Prothero sat on the edge of a packing-case and gazed at her, still with
his air of seeing nothing at all remarkable in her behaviour.

Her eyes wandered from him and were caught by the fantastic disorder of
the room. On his writing-table a revolver, a microscope, and a case of
surgical instruments lay in a litter of manuscripts. A drawer, pulled
from its chest, stood on end by the bedside; the contents were strewn at
her feet. With a pang of reminiscence she saw there the things that he
had worn, the thin, shabby garments of his poverty; and among them a few
new things bought yesterday for his journey. An overcoat lay on the bed
beside her. He had not had anything like that before. She put out her
hand and felt the stuff.

"It ought to have had a fur lining," she said, and began to cry quietly.

He rose and came to her and put his hand on her shoulder. Her sobbing
ceased suddenly. She looked up at him and was still, under his touch.

"You don't want to go," she said. "Why are you going?"

"Because I have to. It's the only thing, you see, there is to do."

"If it wasn't for me you wouldn't have to. If you die out there it will
be my doing."

"Won't it be the proprietors of the 'Morning Telegraph' who'll be
responsible--if I die?"

"I set them on to you."

"Did you? I rather hoped they'd pitched on me because I was the best man
for the job."

"The best man--to die?"

"War correspondents don't die. At least they don't set out with that
intention."

"You _will_ die," she said slowly; "because everything I care for does."

"Why care," he said, "for things that are so bent on dying?"

"I care--because they die."

Her cry was the very voice of mortality and mortality's desire. Having
uttered it she seemed suddenly aware of what she had done.

"Why shouldn't I tell you that I care for you? What does it matter? That
ends it."

She rose.

"I know," she said, "I've broken all the rules. A woman shouldn't come
and tell a man she cares for him."

"Why not?" he said simply.

"I tell you, I don't know why not. I only know that I'm so much more
like a man than a woman that the rules for women