"How _dare_ you talk like that!" she said in a low note of concentrated wrath. "How dare you think such despicable thoughts! Of course there are others who would give their lives to save him from a minute's pain; and you would let them take your place,--yours? And you can actually expect that _I_--of all people--will back you up in your desertion of him? No indeed! If you go, you go alone; and I shall never have a word to say to you again. I may be speaking hotly, because I am furiously angry. But I mean every word I say; and my actions will prove it. What's more, _I will not let you go_. You _shall_ stand by him, however frightened you may be. You talk of--loving him, and you would treat him as I should be ashamed to treat a dog! Evelyn! Evelyn!"--her voice broke suddenly, and tears started to her eyes,--"tell me you did not mean what you said; or I don't know how I am to go on helping you at all!" There was more of command than of entreaty in the last words, and Evelyn looked up at the transfigured beauty of her face with a slow shivering sigh. "You are very wonderful, and very--terrible, Honor," she said. "I never imagined you could be as terrible as that." Then her lips quivered, and she caught at the girl's skirt, drawing her nearer. "You _must_ go on helping me, or everything will go to pieces." "So long as you remain a loyal wife to--Theo, I cannot choose but do so, with all my heart." She knelt down again now; and Evelyn, flinging both arms round her neck, broke into a passion of weeping. "I think I was half mad," she moaned through her tears, clinging to Honor as a drowning woman clings to a spar. "And I am dreadfully frightened still. But I will do whatever you tell me. I will try to be a loyal wife, even if----" "We won't think of that at all," Honor interposed hastily. "It cannot--it shall not happen!" But Evelyn's tears flowed on unchecked. The fire of Honor's just anger had melted the morsel of ice in her heart; and in a very short time she had cried herself to sleep. Then Honor gently unlocked the clinging fingers, and went straight to Frank Olliver's room. CHAPTER XXIV. I WANT LADYBIRD. "So free we seem; so fettered fast we are." --BROWNING. A low sun was gilding the hill-tops when two doolies, borne by sturdy _kahars_ and escorted by Wyndham and Mackay, passed between the gate-posts of Desmond's bungalow. Honor stood with Evelyn at the head of the verandah steps; but as the _kahars_ halted, and the officers prepared to dismount, she moved back a space, leaving her to welcome her husband alone.