He reached up and hung it on the mirror over his mantelpiece. "There!" said he. "You will have to jump for them." The girl stared at him incredulously; the words seeming to her some trick of her strained senses. But she glanced upwards to the file and sank back with a low moan. "Will nothing touch you?" she said. For a moment there was a pause. Only the noise of the brook laughing happily as it raced over the stones behind the house broke the silence in the room. Kate heard it vaguely, and it awoke a reminiscence. "Do you remember?" she said. "At Poonah? There was a stream running past the verandah there." She was speaking wearily, with closed eyes, and the firelight played upon a face as white and impassive as a wax mask. "Yes! I remember," answered Hawke, his voice softening with the memory of those few months in India, The recollection was not of what they had thought or said or done--that would not have moved him; but simply of how he had felt towards her. He stood and watched her curiously. The dark lashes began to glisten, and then all in a moment her apathy broke up, and she was shaking in an agony of tears. "I was never so hard to you," she faltered between her sobs. The words floated out freely to Gordon and set his senses reeling. In Hawke they deepened the phantom tenderness already aroused. There was something so childlike in their simplicity. Indeed, as she crouched upon the floor in her abandonment, her white frock stained by her long journey, her sash all crumpled, her loosened hair curling vagrantly about her neck, and her slender figure quivering down to the tips of her shoes, she looked little more than a child masquerading in the emotions of a woman. He took down the file and swung it irresolutely to and fro upon his finger. Kate turned to him impulsively. "Give them to me! You promised you would if I came to fetch them. You can't break that promise now! Think what you have made me risk! Suppose they find out at home? It would have been cruel enough if that had been the only danger. But to bring me to the village where you and Dav--where you and he are the only strangers!" "That was not my fault," Hawke interposed. "How could I tell he was going to blunder over here? I only met him this afternoon. However, you needn't be afraid. The fool's asleep." Gordon felt an almost overpowering impulse to laugh aloud. The irony of the situation was the one thing which his mind could grasp. However, he set his teeth fast to restrain the desire. He would learn all that was to be known first. He could disclose himself to Hawke afterwards. "Are you sure he suspects nothing?" Kate asked. "Perfectly. I was with him this evening, I tell you. He left his lamp burning, so that I had to wait until the place was quiet to put it out, for fear you should mistake the house. There is nothing to fear. Why, he told me that he hadn't even existed until he met you." "Don't!" Kate exclaimed.