However modest the man may be who hides his light under a bushel, it is always pleasing to him to have another lift the basket. As a matter of fact, on that morning at Omdurman it was almost as uncomfortable in the disordered and retreating ranks as it was in our rear, where Bennett lay crushed in the sand under his dead camel. If I did run back to him in the face of the oncoming horde of dervishes, a half-dozen of his own black troopers ran with me and helped to drag him to safety. It was an ordinary incident of the heat of battle, yet I did wish that Bennett were here to tell her about it, with his grateful exaggeration. To me fell the hard task not only of hiding my light, but of blowing it out. "We got him away," I returned carelessly, accenting the pronoun as though the whole corps were concerned. "A lot of his men ran back to him and put him on my horse. I simply led him out of danger." "Oh!" Penelope exclaimed in a tone of disappointment. She looked over the plain; and I beside her, with my stick bent across my knee, studied her face, trying to read in it some promise of kindness and hope. But I found none. She seemed lost in the fair prospect. She had met an old friend and had spoken to him. That was enough. Now it mattered little whether he went away or stayed. It came to me then to try an old, old ruse to test the quality of her indifference. "We had best be going," I said, rising. To my consternation she rose, too, and began to move off carelessly, as though she expected me to follow her to the hotel to see Rufus Blight and then to bid her a casual farewell. I did not follow. Indifferent she might be, but my mind was made up that she should hear me. There was no longer any gulf between us. There was only the barrier of cool indifference which she had raised, and I would fight to break it down. "Penelope," I said, "there are other things that you and I must speak of before we go." "What?" she asked, looking back over her shoulder. "Of your father," I answered, stepping to the wall and leaning on it. I think that she saw reproof in my eyes. She hesitated, stirring the sand with her parasol, and then came to the wall beside me. "Is there anything that I do not know of him?" she asked, as she stood with her chin in her hands, looking over the plain. "You wrote so fully--to my uncle. You might have written to me, David--but still you wrote to my uncle." There was no hard note in Penelope's voice. "You cared for him, David, and he died in your arms. It was for that I forgave you--everything." "Everything? What do you mean by everything?" "There are some things that you will never understand." "But you speak as though I had done much that needed forgiveness."