elp loving you?"

And bending down he kissed her fondly.

"It's all so wonderful," she murmured. "I didn't think that you cared for
me, that you could ever care. You seemed so far away, too occupied with
important things to spare a thought for me. So serious a person, and
sometimes so stern, that I was afraid of you."

He laughed amusedly.

"The wonder is that you ever came to care for me. You do care, don't you,
beloved?"

She looked up at him earnestly.

"Dear, do I seem forward, bold? But our time together is too short for
pretence. Yes, I do care. I love you? I seem to have always loved you. Or
at least to have waited always to love you. I don't think I knew what love
was until now. Until now. Now I do know."

She paused and stared across the room, seeing the vision of her childhood,
her girlhood. From outside came intermittent shouts and an occasional
random shot. But she did not hear them.

"As a child, as a schoolgirl, even afterwards, I used to day-dream. I used
to wonder if any one would ever love me, ever teach me what love is. I
dreamt of a Fairy Prince who would come to me one day, of a strong, brave,
tender man who would care for me, who would want me to care for him. I
often laughed at myself for it afterwards. For in London men all seemed so
very unlike my dream-hero."

She turned her face to him and looked tenderly at him.

"But when I met you," she continued, "I think I knew that you were He. But
I never dared hope that you would learn to care for me."

"Dearest heart," he replied, "I think I must have fallen in love with you
the first moment I saw you. I can see you now as you stood surrounded by
the elephants, a delightful but most unexpected vision in the jungle."

"Did you--oh, did you really like me that very first day?" she asked
eagerly. At the moment the answer seemed to her the most important thing in
the world.

As a lover will do Dermot deceived himself and imagined that his love had
been born at the first sight of her. He told her so; and the girl forgot
the imminent, deadly peril about them in the glow of happiness that warms
the heart of a loving woman who hears that she has been beloved from the
beginning.

"But I looked so absurd," she said dreamily; "so untidy, when you first saw
me. Why, my hair was all down."

He laughed again; but the laughter died from his lips as the remembrance of
their situation returned to him. Death was ordinarily little to him; though
now li