akin to fear. Then, as he spoke no word, she rose and stood beside him,
erect and regal.

"I submit," she said quietly; "not because I must, but because I do not
consider it worth while to do otherwise. The matter is too unimportant
for discussion."

Hone made no rejoinder. He was staring straight before him, stern-eyed
and still.

But a few moments later, he gravely proffered his arm, and in the midst
of a general move they went out together into the moonlit splendour of
the Indian night.

IV

Slowly the boats slipped through the shallows by the bank.

Hone sat facing his companion in unbroken silence while he rowed
steadily up the stream. But there was no longer anger in his steady
eyes. The habit of kindness, which was the growth of a lifetime, had
reasserted itself. He had not been created to fulfil a harsh destiny.
The chivalry at his heart condemned sternness towards a woman.

And Nina Perceval sat in the stern with the moonlight shining in her
eyes and the darkness of a great bitterness in her soul, and waited.
Despite her proud bearing she would have given much to have looked into
his heart at that moment. Notwithstanding all her scorn of him very deep
down in her innermost being she was afraid.

For this was the man who long ago, when she was scarcely more than a
child, had blinded her, baffled her, beaten her. He had won her trust,
and had used it contemptibly for his own despicable ends. He had turned
an innocent game into tragedy, and had gone his way, leaving her life
bruised and marred and bitter before it had ripened to maturity. He had
put out the sunshine for ever, and now he expected to be forgiven.

But she would never forgive him. He had wounded her too cruelly, too
wantonly, for forgiveness. He had laid her pride too low. For even yet,
in all her furious hatred of him, she knew herself bound by a chain that
no effort of hers might break. Even yet she thrilled to the sound of
that soft, Irish voice, and was keenly, painfully aware of him when he
drew near.

He did not know it, so she told herself over and over again. No one
knew, or ever would know. That advantage, at least, was hers, and she
would carry it to her grave. But yet she longed passionately,
vindictively, to punish him for the ruin he had wrought, to humble
him--this faultless knight, this regimental hero, at whose shrine
everybody worshipped--as he had once dared to humble her; to make him
care, if it were ever so little--