“I don’t want to move. It’ll just be another kind of discomfort, that’s all. Why couldn’t you try and take a little bit of care of me, anyway?” “Oh, hon-ey!” he wailed, in youthful bewilderment. “I did try to get you to stay at that hotel in town and get some rest.” “Well, you ought to have made me. Don’t you realize that I took you along to take care of me?” “Uh—” “Now don’t argue about it. I can’t stand argument all the time.” He thought instantly of Lee Theresa Zapp quarreling with her mother, but he said nothing. He gathered the driest bits of thatch and wood he could find in the litter on the stable floor and kindled a fire, while she sat sullenly glaring at him, her face wrinkled and tired in the wan firelight. When the blaze was going steadily, a compact and safe little fire, he spread his coat as a seat for her, and called, cheerily, “Come on now, honey; here’s a regular home and hearthstone for you.” She slipped down from the manger edge and stood in front of him, looking into his eyes—which were level with her own. “You _are_ good to me,” she half whispered, and smoothed his cheek, then slipped down on the outspread coat, and murmured, “Come; sit here by me, and we’ll both get warm.” All night the rain dribbled, but no one came to drive them away from the fire, and they dozed side by side, their hands close and their garments steaming. Istra fell asleep, and her head drooped on his shoulder. He straightened to bear its weight, though his back twinged with stiffness, and there he sat unmoving, through an hour of pain and happiness and confused meditation, studying the curious background—the dark roof of broken thatch, the age-corroded walls, the littered earthen floor. His hand pressed lightly the clammy smoothness of the wet khaki of her shoulder; his wet sleeve stuck to his arm, and he wanted to pull it free. His eyes stung. But he sat tight, while his mind ran round in circles, considering that he loved Istra, and that he would not be entirely sorry when he was no longer the slave to her moods; that this adventure was the strangest and most romantic, also the most idiotic and useless, in history. Toward dawn she stirred, and, slipping stiffly from his position, he moved her so that her back, which was still wet, faced the fire. He built up the fire again, and sat brooding beside her, dozing and starting awake, till morning. Then his head bobbed, and he was dimly awake again, to find her sitting up straight, looking at him in amazement. “It simply can’t be, that’s all…. Did you curl me up? I’m nice and dry all over now. It was very good of you. You’ve been a most commendable person…. But I think we’ll take a train for the rest of our pilgrimage. It hasn’t been entirely successful, I’m afraid.” “Perhaps we’d better.”