at least," and she
came towards Thresk and pleaded.

"You will be thoughtful of her, for her? Oh, if you should play her
false--how I should hate you!" and her eyes flashed fire at him.

"I don't think that you need fear that."

But he was too calm for her, too quiet. She was in the mood to want
heroics. She clamoured for protestations as a drug for her uneasy mind.
And Thresk stood before her without one. She searched his face with
doubtful eyes. Oh, there seemed to her no tenderness in it.

"She will need--love," said Mrs. Repton. "There--that's the word. Can you
give it her?"

"If she comes to me--yes. I have wanted her for eight years," and then
suddenly she got, not heroics, but a glimpse of a real passion. A spasm
of pain convulsed his face. He sat down and beat with his fist upon the
table. "It was horrible to me to ride away from that camp and leave her
there--miles away from any friend. I would have torn her from him by
force if there had been a single hope that way. But his levies would have
barred the road. No, this was the only chance: to come away to Bombay,
to write to her that the first day, the first night she is able to slip
out and travel here she will find me waiting."

Mrs. Repton was satisfied. But while he had been speaking a new fear had
entered into her.

"There's something I should have thought of," she exclaimed.

"Yes?"

"Captain Ballantyne is not generous. He is just the sort of man not to
divorce his wife."

Thresk raised his head. Clearly that possibility had no more occurred to
him than it had to Jane Repton. He thought it over now.

"Just the sort of man," he agreed. "But we must take that risk--if
she comes."

"The letter's not yet written," Mrs. Repton suggested.

"But it will be," he replied, and then he stood and confronted her. "Do
you wish me not to write it?"

She avoided his eyes, she looked upon the floor, she began more than one
sentence of evasion; but in the end she took both his hands in hers and
said stoutly:

"No, I don't! Write! Write!"

"Thank you!"

He went to the door, and when he had reached it she called to him in a
low voice.

"Mr. Thresk, what did you mean when you repeated and repeated if
she comes?"

Thresk came slowly back into the room.

"I meant that eight years ago I gave her a very good reason why she
should put no faith in me."

He told her that quite frankly and simply, but he told her no more than
that, and she let him go. He