Her birdlike eyes were bright on him.

"I would go if I thought I could get anything by going. Special
information--with reference to a Plan of Attack. Oh! if you knew how I'm
dying to be really under fire. To hear bullets zip-zip--isn't that the
sound?--as they strike the ground or walls, and shells scream overhead!"

She clasped her sunburnt little jewelled hands in affected ecstasy. His
eyes were stern, and the lines about his mouth deepened.

"Pray to-night that you may never hear those sounds you speak of!"

She struck an exaggerated attitude of horrified consternation.

"But no! Why am I here?"

"The Lord only knows. I've seen a hen peck at a lump of dynamite...."

"Ah, you never will take me seriously. But own in your secret heart you're
as much afraid as I am that a Relieving Column will be sent down
from----Do tell me again where Grumer is with the Brigade? Uli, in Upper
Rhodesia--thanks! Well, Grumer is quite a near friend of Bingo's, and an
old flame of mine. But--to burst our lovely peacock bubble of Siege and
let the whole situation down, _sans coup ferir_, into muddy
commonplace--may Grumer never come!" She held up her coffee-cup, and drank
the toast.

"Only for the women and children here," he said, and his thin nostrils
moved to the measure of his quickened breathing, and a hot spark glowed
in his keen eyes, "I'd have joined you in that. But under the present
circumstances--I'd give five years of life--and I love life!--if our
lookouts could pick up Grumer's Advance by the time grey dawn creeps up
the east again."

She was incredulous.

"You, who said when you got orders to sail for South Africa--I have it on
the authority of your Henley hostess--'I hope they'll give me a warm
corner'!"

"I did say--just that. And I meant it."

His lips pursed in a soundless whistle. She went on:

"I've seen your preparations. The little old forts, put into such repair!
and the armoured train, with a Maxim and a Hotchkiss, standing in the
Railway siding, ready for business. And the earthworks! And the
trek-waggon barricades, and the shelters panelled and roofed with
corrugated iron. And your bomb-proof Headquarter Bureau, the iron skull
that's to hold the working brain of the place ... with underground
telegraphic and telephonic communications with all the forts and outposts.
It's colossal! A masterpiece of cool, deadly, lethal forethought.... I
thought I was incapable of the delicious shiver of expectat