replied the girl, gaily.

"But do you realize that they were probably, searching for you?"

"Yes! And I was afraid that they might find me. I even put out the fire
that they should not discover our camp and come up to investigate. When
I saw them going away yestermorning I could have clapped my hands for
gladness."

Stane looked at her incredulously. Here was something that was beyond
him.

"Why--why did you let them go?" he cried sharply.

"You wish I had revealed myself?" she asked with compunction,
misunderstanding his question. "You think I ought to have brought them
up here?"

"That was for yourself to decide," he answered quietly, adding with a
little laugh. "I am well content with things as they are. But I am
curious to know why you let deliverance from the hardships of this
situation pass by on the other side."

"Oh," replied Helen in some confusion, "I remembered that you did not
like Gerald Ainley!"

"But," he protested, "there was yourself to think of."

"Yes," was the reply, given with laughter, "and I was doing so--if you
only knew it."

"How? I cannot see it."

"You forget my pride as amateur surgeon and nurse," she retorted. "I
like to see the end of things that I begin, and if I had brought Mr.
Ainley up here he would have wanted to take me away, and leave you with
the Indian." She broke off, and looked at him with a gay smile.
"Perhaps you would have preferred----"

"No! No!" he interrupted protestingly.

"And there is another reason--quite as selfish as the last. You see,
Mr. Stane, I have been delicately reared; boarding-school, Newnham--the
usual round you know! London in the season, Scotland in the autumn, and
the shires for the hunting months. It is an inane sort of life, as I
have always felt, pleasant enough at first, but inane for all that, and
after a time rather a bore. Can you understand that?"

"Yes," he said, with a nod, "I think I can."

"Most of the men of our set have something to do! Either they are in
the army, or in Parliament, or managing estates, but the women--well,
they live a butterfly life. There seems to me no escape for them. Do
what they will, unless they become suffragettes and smash windows or
smack fat policemen, their life drifts one way. Charity?--it ends in a
charity ball. Politics?--it means just garden-parties or stodgy
week-ends at country houses, with a little absurd canvassing of rural
labourers at election times. Sometimes I used to consider i