He would give her a love as strong and as worthy. He would make her happiness his aim and his goal, his watch-word and his prize. No sacrifice should ever be too great for her. He would offer all he had. No; never should she come to repent her preference--to regret the love she had refused. She had chosen him--the lesser before the greater; and she should not find him wanting. She should not be disappointed in him. Never, never now should his love fail her! Impulsive as always, he lifted his sword and kissed the hilt with reverence. "So help me, God!" he swore. CHAPTER XIX A FIGHT WITHOUT A FINISH It was not the same Olga who went back into the busy little Anglo-Indian community at Sharapura after the breaking of her engagement, though it was only those intimate with her who marked the change. To the rest of the world she was as she had ever been, quiet and gentle, perhaps a little colourless, possibly in the eyes of some even insignificant, --"too reserved to be interesting," according to Colonel Bradlaw who liked a woman to have plenty of vivacity and mirth in her composition. To those who knew her best--to Nick, to Daisy, and to Noel--she was changed, though it was a change of which she herself was scarcely aware. Her re-awakened spontaneity had gone again. She asked sympathy of none. Even to Nick she made no confidences. She had become wholly woman, and she had learned as it were to stand alone. She preferred her solitude. Of Noel she seemed a little shy at first, until by frank good-fellowship he overcame this. Noel's courtship was apparently at a standstill. He made no open attempt to further his cause with her, though every day he sought her out with cheery friendliness, never overstepping the mark, never giving her the smallest occasion for embarrassment. And thus every day her confidence in him grew. She came to rely upon him in a fashion that she scarcely realized, depending upon his consideration and unfailing chivalry more than she knew. She had never liked him better than she liked him then, in the first desperate bitterness of her trouble. He asked so little of her, was so readily pleased with her mere friendship, and though at the back of her mind she knew that this was only his pleasant method of marking time she was none the less grateful to him for his patience. He helped her through her dark hours without seeming in the least aware that she needed help. He demanded rather than offered sympathy, and in giving it she found herself oddly soothed. She was glad that Noel wanted her, glad that he regarded her co-operation as quite indispensable to his schemes. He occupied her thoughts at a time when private reflection was torture. The misery was there perpetually at her heart, but he gave her no time to dwell upon it. He carried her along with him with an impetus which she had no desire to resist.