Though he was heated with exertion, it was a long time before any warmth could melt its way into her chilled flesh. Terrington pressed his face against hers, first to one cold cheek and then to another, breathing, as one thaws a window pane, upon her neck. At last, when he had almost lost hope of saving her, she made a little nestling motion towards him like a frozen bird before the fire. Then her breath began to be audible, and she gave long sighs as though to free herself of his weight upon her. Terrington's limbs were numb with the intentness of their pressure, and his arms, folded about her, had fallen asleep. The cold seemed to lie like a wet sheet over his back. Presently Rose moved beneath him, a movement of her whole body: her eyes opened, met his without wonder, and closed again with a sigh of content. Her arms straightened, and then, loosening limply from the shoulders, slipped to her sides. She seemed to soften and grow supple beneath him and her breath came evenly between her lips. She was asleep. Terrington raised himself slightly, and so stayed all the night. The agonies that he suffered from cold, cramp, and the stubborn struggle with fatigue passed what he had thought possible to human endurance. In the gray of the morning she opened her eyes again. "Nevile!" she exclaimed, as though she had but just parted with him in a dream. She had pushed in wonderment her hands against him, and he fell over as though his arms had been cut off. She stared an instant at his grotesque efforts to move, then with a sudden passion of enlightenment seized his useless arms. "Nevile, Nevile!" she cried, "what have you done for me? You've saved my life." He smiled dimly, trying to lift himself upon his elbows, but dropped back again. "Have I?" he said. Her left arm went like a snake about his shoulder, and her face came down quick and close to his. "Why did you do it?" she asked almost angrily. "I love you, dear," he said. XII After the night under that gable in the roof of the world, many things happened; but there ended the siege of Sar. For Sar is, in the old tongue of Maristan, the word that stood alike for the kingdom's centre, the heart's core, and this was a siege unprepared and unintended, by a girl of a man's heart. For it was to the girl that he surrendered. The rest of the retreat, the cold neglect with which the Government of India tried to treat the little force, the angry expostulation of the Press of England, and the tardy honours, are they not written in the book of the Rulers of India, and in the heart of a people that does not forget? But with his crossing of the Palári, Terrington's achievement ceases. The rest was mere marching. Thanks, indeed, to his diplomacy it was mere marching, and that not a sword was drawn against him on the road home. But he thought little of such success; he had a natural capacity, he said, for creating false impressions.