"Well, a woman's only got to let a man see she thinks he's afraid of anything to put him at it. I let 'em all see," she said, smiling. He looked at her hard. "You think I couldn't?" she challenged. "I've never thought of anything you couldn't," he said simply. She looked at him, laughing softly. Then, raising herself on her wrists, poised her dainty figure above the table, letting it swing between her arms, while she met with the fluttering twist of a smile the intent displeasure in his eyes. "What did you do it for?" he asked. She pushed herself back along the polished table till her knees and knuckles were side by side. "What does a woman ever do anything for?" she retorted, leaning over her perch with her elbows upon her knees. "To show she can," she added, as he offered no solution. "I was going to let you see you weren't the king of Sar." "Good God," he groaned in weary bewilderment. "Where's Sir Colvin?" She shook her head slowly, smiling, from side to side. "Don' know, don' know, don' know!" she babbled. "What did you get?" He took no notice of the question. "And your husband?" he said. "Lewis is with Sir Colvin. May be anywhere. Probably messing up my room. They're preparing for the Durbar," she drawled with soft malice. His preoccupation paid no heed to it; and she went on: "It's wonderful the hours we do things at here. Just decent breakfast-time and we've had half a day. When did your Majesty breakfast?" she asked. "Some time yesterday," he said indifferently. "Has Gale written?" But she was on her feet at once. "Oh, I say!" she cried. "How horrid of you not to tell me!" The tatties on the anteroom entrance had closed behind her, like reeds behind a snowy pheasant, ere she finished speaking, and Terrington could hear the "Kitmatgar, O Kitmatgar!" of her lifted childish voice ring along the empty mess-room. II As Rose Chantry left the room the light went out of Terrington's face, and an irresistible lassitude crept like a gray smoke across it. He had been for three days in the saddle, with but a couple of his own guides, in a country cut by torrents from precipitous stone, among a silent and lurking people who were only waiting the word to murder him, and for the last day and night he had been living on food snatched from a holster as he rode. There was no one in Sar to whom he could delegate the duty; no one acquainted as he with the country and the people; no one who knew so intimately their private avarices and animosities; no one who could utilize their tribal treacheries and pretensions, to extract from them the grain they had a mind to keep. They had known him five years before, while Sar was as yet unembroiled of its neighbours, and still admitted British influence and rupees, when his shooting feats had won him the nickname by which everywhere he was known, and the friendship of the men who were waiting now, without breach of friendliness, to put an end to him.