hem would want to.' she laughed again
tremulously. 'If it comes to that though, I fancy you'd have some
trouble in disposing of me against my will.'

'Do you think I'd ever want you against your will! No. I'd sooner cut
the whole show, and let you scorn me at a distance as much as you
pleased.'

'I--scorn you! ... I wouldn't scorn you.'

'And even your scorn wouldn't kill my love,' he said, in that moved
voice that was so unlike his ordinary utterance--'because there's
nothing in the Universe, so far as I know it, that would be able to do
that. Why, it seems to me that my feeling for you is as much a part of
myself as the very blood in my heart. I knew you were the only woman in
the world for me the moment I saw you--so slim and small and strange,
the very contrary of what I'd always thought would be the kind of woman
I'd be in love with--that day when you came walking along that gangway
behind Lady Tallant. It was just a revelation, and then I bolted
straight off to Alexandra City.'

'Which seems rather odd, doesn't it, in the circumstances?'

'No, it's this way. I had to take a few days for getting over the
shock--for rubbing in the fact that what I wanted more than anything on
God's earth, now I'd seen it, was utterly beyond my reach.'

'One might think I was an enchanted princess--a sort of Brunhilda
guarded by a fiery dragon.'

'That's a good bit of how I looked on you--though I've never made much
out of Wagner--he isn't human enough for me.... And how could I have
dreamed then that you'd ever let me come as near you as I am this
evening!'

'I must say, Mr McKeith, you haven't shown such extreme diffidence in
approaching me.'

'Ah! Because you soon showed that Brunhilda's dragon was only
pasteboard and blue fire after all--one of the shams you despise. I'm
not afraid of him now.... Oh, it's wonderful.... It's beautiful....'

He took her other hand and held the two covered over by his own as he
said with an odd solemnity:

'Lady Bridget O'Hara will you come away with me to the Bush, leaving
everything else behind you?'

She stood very slender and erect, her eyes shining in the moonlight out
of her small pale face and fixed upon him thoughtfully as if she were
weighing his proposition. After a few minutes, she answered
deliberately.

'Yes, Mr Colin McKeith, I will go away with you into the Bush, leaving
everything else behind me--the old "Lady Bridget O'Hara" included.'

He gave an indescribable ej