Nor was the realisation of this fact her sole punishment. Whatever Dick might think, she had no illusions as to the frame of mind in which Stratford had gone to the Palace. His story she had early heard from Lady Haigh, with the addition of the significant remark that he was never likely to marry now, and it had given her a distinct thrill of pleasure when she found that this faithful lover was willing to be her friend on the footing she liked best. The greater number of her medical _confrères_ in London, and of the many men whose friendship she had gained and kept since her hospital days, had been content to accept her terms and to meet her on the equal ground of comradeship. Some there had been, as Mabel had told Dick, who were anxious to go further, and had been courteously though firmly repulsed; but Stratford was not one of these. He had made a friend of her as if she had been a man, she thought, and he had sacrificed himself for her in exactly the spirit he would have exhibited if Lady Haigh had been in danger, and not Miss Keeling. She knew well enough that there was no personal feeling whatever in his case, but it was different with Dick. Why had he allowed Stratford to go instead of going himself? He did care for her--at least, she had begun to think so until his plain speaking of a week ago had created the breach between them. But now she was on the horns of a dilemma. Either he could not care for her, since he had left it to another man to give his life to save hers, or else, if he did care for her, he was a coward who was willing to shelter himself behind the other man’s self-sacrifice. But Dick’s past record was sufficient to put the latter supposition beyond the bounds of possibility, and Georgia was thrown back upon the former. He could not care for her, and she cared for him. To the woman whose heart had never been touched before, the thought was almost unendurable in the shame it brought with it. And she had sent Stratford to his death! What would there have been in the slight humiliation--more fancied than real, after all--involved in asking his leave as head of the party before quitting the Mission, compared with the overwhelming remorse and misery which now oppressed her? She recalled the threats launched against herself by Antar Khan’s mother, and sobbed and shuddered at the thought that the tortures of which the mere mention had been considered sufficient to terrify herself were now being inflicted on another, and by her fault. Lady Haigh, who came wandering in and out of her room like a restless ghost, could offer her no comfort, since the best they could hope for was that Stratford was dead already, cut down by the guard in some conflict provoked by himself, and that he had thus died without either torture or indignity. The two women could not endure to talk, could not even pray; they could only weep in concert and exchange half-uttered surmisings which were worse than certainties.