'This is no time or place for amenities, and you know it. Answer me! Are you a prisoner? For if so I will take you away with me and protect you honourably until I can restore you to your own people. If you are not a prisoner--if you have given yourself up to the enemies of your race, then I will leave you to reap your own punishment.' The lady laughed. 'So stern all of a sudden!' she said. 'You are playing with me. You are wasting time.' 'Time was made for slaves, Tom,' said the lady, in a sweet girlish treble, 'and I am not a slave; neither are you. Sit down under this tree, and let us talk together quietly. Ah! how pleasant it is to speak to an Englishman again!' 'Vivien! are you mad?' 'Yes, I am mad, always mad, Tom; but madder than ever now. Be mad with me; you have no idea how delightful it is to live in a dream!' 'The dream will soon be over, my poor child. Do you think that you can tame men as you tame serpents?' 'Think? I am sure of it, Tom!' 'Then, if this is your dream, for heaven's sake awake! Good God! why do you look at me so?' cried the young fellow, in a sudden transport. She was standing before him in the moonlight, her golden hair blown this way and that way with the wind, her eyes full of laughter, an expression half-mocking, half-pitiful, playing about her lips. 'Do you know how awful this time is?' he said. 'Are you human?' She laughed. 'No,' she said, 'I don't think I am. Take my advice, Tom, and be inhuman too!' 'Vivien, you are playing with me!' 'Of course I am; I never do anything but play. I played with you, and if it had not been for Grace Elton, who is a very serious young person, I should have won you over as a playfellow. I played with Charlie Doncaster, poor boy! But he had not my animal spirits, and he was beginning to be grave and tiresome when--but I don't want to talk of disagreeable things. Well! The next was his Royal or Imperial Highness, Dost Ali Khan. I wonder, by the bye, if you remember him. I was within an ace of running over him in the streets of Delhi. It would have been a good thing for some people if I had succeeded. You saved him, didn't you? Set that as a make-weight against all your good deeds, Mr. Tom, and see what the result will be! But to return, as the story-tellers say. I was so much amused with his Highness that I took the trouble to cultivate him; and it was a very funny little episode, I can assure you. Heavens! how he hated me at first! I tell him sometimes that I am surprised he did not kill me, for I gave him heaps and heaps of chances. He let me live, however, against his better judgment, I believe, and now he is my slave. I can do whatever I like with him. What do you say to that for a game?' 'I say that you are mad--that you don't know what you are saying, and the night is passing. No more of this folly! Will you come with me or will you not?'