aid.

His face altered. With a mighty effort he subdued the fiery impulse that
urged him to override her doubts and fears, to take and hold her in his
arms, to make her his with or without her will.

He became in a trice the kindly, winning personality that all his world
knew and loved. "Sure then, you're not afraid of me?" he said, as though
he softly cajoled a child. "It wouldn't be yourself at all if you were,
you that could tread me underfoot like a centipede and not be a mite the
worse."

She smiled a little, smiled and uttered a sudden quick sigh. "Don't you
think you are rather a fool, Pat?" she said. "I gave you credit for more
shrewdness. You certainly had more once."

"What do you mean?" There was a sharp note of pain in Hone's voice.

She moved restlessly across the room and paused with her back to him.
"None but a fool would conclude that because a woman is pretty she must
be good as well," she said, a tremor of bitterness in her voice. "Why do
you take it for granted in this headlong fashion that I am all that man
could desire?"

"You are all that I want," he said.

She shook her head. "The woman who lived inside me died long ago," she
said, "and a malicious spirit took her place."

"None but yourself would ever dare to say that to me," said Hone. "And I
won't listen even to you. Princess--"

"You are not to call me that!" She rounded upon him suddenly, a fierce
gleam in her eyes. "You must never--never--"

She broke off. He was close to her, with that on his face that stilled
her protest. He gathered her to him with a tenderness that yet was
irresistible.

"Sure, then," he whispered, with a whimsical humour that cloaked all
deeper feeling, "you shall be my queen instead, for by the saints I
swear that in some form or other I was created to be your slave."

And though she averted her face and after a moment withdrew herself from
his arms, she raised no further protest. She suffered him to plant the
flag of his supremacy unhindered.

VIII

Certainly the colonel's wife was in her element. A wedding in the
regiment, and that the wedding of its idolized hero, was to her an
affair of almost more importance than anything that had happened since
her own. The church had been fully decorated under her directions, and
she had turned it into as elegant a reception room as circumstances
permitted. White favours had been distributed to the dusky warriors
under Hone's command who lined the aisle. All