"Not if," he answered resolutely. "When! Do you believe that men like Landon win! You, yourself? Didn't you tell him that he would have to pay, eventually. I'm going to present the bill--I. I know it; I have it as a conviction!" Her eyes glowed down at him. The dead roots of hope began to sprout in her heart. The down-hearted, the _fainéant_? Has any natural woman a use for such an one? No! Nature made you the leader, they cry to the male. For God's sake, behave as one! She offered no protest, no comment. She did not question his faith; her matter-of-factness only asked for detail. "Meanwhile?" she questioned. "Meanwhile?" He made a little grimace. "It is a gray prospect," he admitted. "I lie here, unconscious. I lie physically--and by implication--morally. I feign myself as one on the lip of extinction. I wait!" She felt vaguely disappointed. "You wait--till when?" she asked. He smiled. "Till a very old friend comes by," he answered. "She has seldom failed me, and then my own laggardness was at fault. They call her Opportunity." CHAPTER XXII THE PRISON "What is to be the end?" asked Claire, suddenly, wearily. "What is to be the end?" Aylmer looked up from his pallet on the floor--looked at the girl--looked at the walls of bare masonry--looked at the shaft of sunlight which slanted through the barred window. For eight and forty hours he had lain there, shamming, shamming, shamming. For three days previous to his being brought to that place, he had lain as motionless in the lazaret of the _Santa Margarita_. Conceive it--you who walk abroad as you list! Nearly a week of inaction, when all the time your blood is coursing healthily in your veins, your feet itch for the road, and your wrath, above all, is suffering a continual fever for which no remedy is presently available. The picture, however, had its other side. Could he, in any other circumstances, have advanced so far in intimacy with his companion? When, in the ordinary intercourse of uneventful life, would the barrier which she had raised against him have been flung down? Where else than in this island prison of Salicudi would he have seen the glorious vision of hope over that barrier's crumbling walls? Dwelling on these matters, he was able to answer her pessimism with a genuine smile. "When I first met you I told myself that I should have to play a waiting game," he said. "Well, it is proving itself so, literally." She flushed faintly. "You must forgive me," she sighed. "We women are not taught to wait. And in America we are allowed to be petulant, you know." She smiled. "You Britishers have more sense of discipline. But an end? Surely you yourself must want to see one? How long are you to lie there, paralyzed for action?" He was silent for a moment, and his eyes were shadowed. "It is I who must ask forgiveness," he said at last. "Perhaps--I hardly realized what it is--for you." A throb of compunction stung her. She gave a little cry of protest.