“You’ll escape better than most women, but you won’t get off scot-free, you are a woman and the world is the world. I will make the matter right at the Clubs; you want to go to your mother for a short time, and I wish to go to Africa where delays are apt to occur, and I have a convenient reputation for vagabondage. If I were you I would immediately inform every woman of your acquaintance of our arrangement in a candid spirit of information. And, Gwen, as the most awful misfortune that ever befell a child is to be cast on the world without a mother, see that your care for this mother’s health, and when the time of peril comes for her life, is as great as mine would be.” “I shall not betray your trust in any way,” she said quietly. “I shall not trouble you to write, I shall find other means of hearing of you. But even if you are dying, Gwen, and I know it, I shall not come to you unless you distinctly and in your right mind ask me to do so; then, dear, I shall come; otherwise, and later on, we can make definite arrangements. Good-bye, Gwen, good-bye, dear.” He went to the door and held it open to let her pass. She paused and turned her two sad eyes on him. “Go, child,” he said gently, “go quickly.” When she had gone he locked the door and fell on the sofa, still warm from her sleeping body, and fought down his agony in decent silence. Then he washed and dressed, and went down to his dinner. CHAPTER XXXVII. THE next day Strange went down and told Mrs. Fellowes more or less about it, and put his wife entirely into her hands. People were less surprised than might have been supposed at Strange’s suddenly-organized expedition. He had broken conventional laws now for so long that if he had settled down into a solid every-day life, without some characteristic protest, he would have been regarded rather as a fraud. The first possible companion his thoughts fell on, was Brydon. “It would be bringing him out into the wilderness with a vengeance,” he said, and as a matter of fact it was just what Brydon wanted at the time, and he was overjoyed at the offer. When Tolly heard of the proposed move, he came to a firm resolve to be in it. At first Strange absolutely refused to take him, but at last his persistence became so annoying that he gave in, but not till Tolly had taken the most powerfully-expressed oaths of abstinence. When all this was settled, Tolly looked up with a grin and remarked deprecatingly, “If you ’adn’t given in to take me straight, I meant to reach you crooked at Suez, sir, I never intended, your honour, to let you face them black varmint, without me.” Strange looked at the hideous grinning creature, that one good puff of wind could blow off the face of the earth. “Do you know you are an idiot, Tolly?” “Yes, sir,” said Tolly cheerfully. “And that you’re very likely going to your death?” “Not when you’re about, sir; death and you ain’t mates.”