done?"

"It isn't what he has done, but what he won't do, my dear. Here he is in
love with a young woman in every way suitable, and who is ready to say
yes whenever he asks her, and he won't ask, and is not going to ask,
because of a ridiculous crotchet he has got in his head."

Isobel flushed and then grew pale.

"What is the crotchet?" she asked, in a low tone, after being silent for
some time.

"What do you think, my dear? He is more disgusted with himself than
ever."

"Not about that nervousness, surely," Isobel said, "after all he has
done and the way he has risked his life? Surely that cannot be troubling
him?"

"It is, my dear; not so much on the general as on a particular ground.
He insists that by jumping out of the boat when that fire began, he has
done for himself altogether."

"But what could he have done, Doctor?"

"That's what I ask him, my dear. He insists that he ought to either have
seized you and jumped overboard with you, in which case you would both
probably have been killed, as I pointed out to him, or else stayed
quietly with you by your side, in which case, as I also pointed out
to him, you would have had the satisfaction of seeing him murdered. He
could not deny that this would have been so, but that in no way alters
his opinion of his own conduct. I also ventured to point out to him that
if he had been killed, you would at this moment be either in the power
of that villainous Nana, or be with hundreds of others in that ghastly
well at Cawnpore. I also observed to him that I, who do not regard
myself as a coward, also jumped overboard from your boat, and that
Wilson, who is certainly a plucky young fellow, and a number of others,
jumped over from the other boat; but I might as well have talked to a
post."

Isobel sat for some time silent, her fingers playing nervously with each
other.

"Of course it seems foolish of him to think of it so strongly, but I
don't think it is unnatural he should feel as he does."

"May I ask why?" the Doctor said sarcastically.

"I mean, Doctor, it would be foolish of other people, but I don't think
it is foolish of him. Of course he could have done no good staying in
the boat--he would have simply thrown away his life; and yet I think,
I feel sure, that there are many men who would have thrown away their
lives in such a case. Even at that moment of terror I felt a pang, when,
without a word, he sprang overboard. I thought of it many times that
long