In the darkness was the unknown morrow, and death, and the blood and horror of battle; and in the firelight just the man and herself; the man who was showing her a new unknown kind of manliness, and herself with all her married days and ways forgot, listening like a girl to her first discovery in heroes. "Time to turn in," said Terrington, as he came back out of the darkness on parting from Hussain. "We start at two; and no one can say when we sleep again, so do all you know. I'll see if your doolie is ready." She turned out one little hand to the flame with a shiver. "Oh, I can't leave the fire," she said. "Mayn't I sleep here?" He looked at her with the air of considering her request as a reasonable proposition. "I don't see why you shouldn't," he said; "I'll fetch your blankets." He fetched the mattress as well, and the boots he had given her, which he happened to find inside the doolie. "You must wear these," he said, "if you sleep out." She took them from him with a sigh of submission, sat down upon the mattress and prepared to pull them on. "Don't put your hand into them," he said warningly. She opened her eyes in question. "It may make you cry," he smiled. She repaid his memory with a glance of pleased surprise, and shook her head softly. "Not now!" she said. She held up the boot towards him, and thrust her arm down into its depths. "So warm," she purred. She covered her shyness in pulling them on before him with the pretence that they were much too tight. Terrington smiled at her efforts. "I'm afraid you'll grow out of them very soon," he said. Then he tucked her in under the blankets and wrapping himself in his cloak lay down beside her. She risked the comfort in which he had arranged her to stretch out a small white hand to him to say good-night; and he held it long enough to express to her the subtle newness and nearness in their common knowledge that such a night might mean. Rose seemed only to have just ceased to watch the changing colour of the flame on Terrington's face when a hand was laid on her shoulder and his voice spoke in her ear. She jumped up, dreaming of battles, so stiff that she would have fallen but for the arm which he put under hers. The doolie suddenly appeared out of the darkness, he helped her in, bade her good-bye with a clasp of the hand, dropped a sharp order to the sentry who strode beside her, and was gone. The bearers moved off at a quick amble, and when they halted she knew she was amongst men. The night was still of an impenetrable black and she could see nothing between her curtains, but she heard in the silence the shuffle of feet, and the grunted "Huh!" of the Bakót men as they fell in half awake and hitched up their accoutrements. Then with a whisper the jampanis moved on, and to the swinging to and fro of the doolie she fell asleep. X Rose woke to a sense of excitement which pierced her sleep.