an, and you're so solid and
convincing!

"There! I'm all right now!" she said, with an abrupt return to the
boyish, prosaic air that he found utterly adorable. "I have exploded.
I'm hungry. Let's go back and make supper. It's your turn to talk. Tell
me how you got here in advance of us, you wonderful man! And Mary----!"
She stopped short and her eyes filled. "How selfish of me to forget her
even for a moment!"

"She was not badly wounded," he said. "We'll probably overtake her
to-morrow."

"And you? I thought I saw a ghost when you rose up from the bushes."

"No magic in that," said Stonor. "I just walked round by the hills."

"Just walked round by the hills," she echoed, mocking his offhand
manner, and burst out laughing. "That was nothing at all!" Her eyes
added something more that she dared not put into words: "You were made
for a woman to love to distraction!"

When they returned to the dug-out, Imbrie studied their faces through
narrowed lids, trying to read there what had passed between them. Their
serenity discomposed him. Hateful taunts trembled on his lips, but he
dared not utter them.

As for Clare and Stonor, neither of them sentimental persons, their
breasts were eased. Each now felt that he could depend on the other in
the best sense until death: meanwhile passion could wait. They made a
fire together and cooked their supper with as unconscious an air as if
they had just come out from home a mile or two to picnic. They ignored
Imbrie, particularly Clare, who, with that wonderful faculty that women
possess, simply obliterated him by her unconsciousness of his presence.
The prisoner could not understand their air towards each other. He
watched them with a puzzled scowl. Clare was like a child over the
prairie-chicken. An amiable dispute arose over the division of it, which
Stonor won and forced her to eat every mouthful.

She washed the dishes while he cleared a space among the bushes on top
of the bank, and pitched her little tent. The camp-bed was still in
Imbrie's outfit, and Stonor set it up with tender hands, thinking of the
burden it would bear throughout the night. Also in Imbrie's outfit he
found his own service revolver, which he returned to Clare for her
protection.

Afterwards they made a little private fire for themselves a hundred feet
or so from Imbrie, and sedately sat themselves down beside it to talk.

Stonor said: "If you feel like it, tell me what happened after I went to
hunt