Terrington had left the porterage of the reserve ammunition to Walcot's arrangement, and had been expecting his report for half an hour. Walcot had, however, considered the packing of Mrs. Chantry's boxes of more importance. The expression of Terrington's opinion on his preference was a good deal tempered by Mrs. Chantry's presence; but even so was caustic enough to burn itself into Walcot's memory. As he left the hall without a word, Rose Chantry lifted an Afghan poshteen from the heap beside her. "Did you send me this?" she asked. It was lined with astrachan, and exquisitely embroidered, and was the most valuable of Terrington's few possessions. "Yes," he said, "it was the only warm thing I could get for you. You will want everything you can wear, and you can put that on over a good deal. There are some boots to come." She did not know that he had sent her the thing of which he had most need himself, and his giving had about it no air of gallantry; but the proof that he had thought of her at a moment when he had to think of everything touched her far more than had Walcot's voluble commiseration. She held out her hand to him and tried to speak, but her throat closed and her lips trembled. He took her hand in both of his. "Poor, poor thing!" he said. Gholam Muhammed entered with the long lamb-lined boots at that moment and laid them with a salaam in front of her. They had been made for Terrington and were long enough to reach to a man's knee, and Rose, whose every breath at the moment compromised with a sob, thrust out her pretty foot beside them with unconscious coquetry. "Oh, that's all right," said Terrington, smiling; "they'll go over the others. You'll not find them a bit too big." He lifted one, with its tassels and showy crimson calf, and, taking her wrist as if she had been a child, thrust her hand down through the woolly lining which almost filled the top. The loose sleeve slid back to her elbow against the leather edge, and as she looked into his face with a surprised compliance, something in the softness of the curling silken warmth against her skin touched her suddenly beyond her power of control. She snatched her arm away from him, and, flinging herself upon the heap of curtains and cushions, burst into tears. Terrington, completely at fault, made no attempt to console her. He knew when to leave a man unhindered and to give a horse its head, and the instinct helped him with a woman's tears. He stood watching her sobbing shoulders, and the shadows on her golden hair, but his thoughts, the instant they were freed from her, flew forward to the forcing of the Sorágh Gul, the double-headed defile on the road to Rashát, where he knew Mir Khan could intercept him and compel him to face an attack from three sides at once. He tried to compel his memory to yield some details of the position which he might turn to account, for his own field-sketches only supplied features which would be useful to the enemy.