"Of course," he answered, getting out of his chair to hand it to her; but Walcot had already drawn forward a seat of Sari rush from the relics of the Residency, and she dropped into it limply, with a nod of acknowledgment to Terrington, amid all the crushed and huddled fragments of her own lost little home. Walcot sat down on a box beside her. A tiny jade god slid down the pile of rugs and bowls and cushions, and lay at her feet with a severed arm. He had been for years the very dearest of her household treasures, and now to find him maimed and friendless moved in her a despondent misery which she had not felt at her husband's death. She hid the little broken body in the hollow of her hand, and sat there, her head bent over it, shaking with sobs. It was the very smallness of the grief that brought her tears. Terrington blotted the notes he had written and laid down his pen. He made no sort of preamble: for anything in his manner the occasion might have been the most ordinary in the world. "I wish," he said, "to explain my plans. Some of us may not come through the next few weeks, and I don't want those who do to be saddled with my mistakes. So I'll enter any protest, to cover you in case I'm not with you at the finish. We leave Sar to-night." Even the two dark impassive faces on his right reflected the unexpectedness of his announcement, and Walcot half rose to his feet. "Abandon the Fort?" he exclaimed. "Abandon the Fort, and everything we cannot carry, and retire by the Palári upon Rashát," said Terrington quietly. "But I understood, if you'll excuse me," continued Walcot, trying to control his excitement, "that all the defences of the Fort which we've been at for the last month were your idea." "They were," said Terrington. "Have you changed your mind then?" asked the other sharply. "No," said Terrington slowly, "but I've changed my position. I've only so far had to decide how to make the Fort defensible if it had to be defended." "Yes, but!" Walcot objected, "the clearing of the Residency, the blowing down of these trees; all that has taken place since! What's been the object of that if you didn't mean to stay?" "In war," said Terrington quietly, "it's sometimes as well to keep your intentions from the enemy." "Did Sir Colvin mean us to stay here, sir?" enquired Dore. "Yes," said Terrington. "Sir Colvin intended to hold out in Sar if anything went wrong till a relieving force could get up here from Sampur." "You absolutely disagree with him, then?" Walcot rapped out. Terrington looked at him thoughtfully. "I have another point of view," he said. "And what's that?" snapped the other. "He was a political officer and I am a soldier," said Terrington simply. Dore turned his shoulder upon Walcot, with a wrinkle of annoyance at his carping note. "Don't you think we could hold Sar, sir?" he asked with boyish eagerness for a stand-up fight.