Diana drew a quick breath. While the man was still in the adjoining room the moment for which she was waiting seemed interminable. And now she wished he had not gone. He stood between her and--what? For the first time since the coming of Saint Hubert she was alone with him, really alone. Only a curtain separated them, a curtain that she could not pass. She longed to go to him, but she did not dare. She was pulled between love and fear, and for the moment fear was in the ascendant. She shivered, and a sob rose in her throat as the memory came to her of another night during those two months of happiness, that were fast becoming like a wonderful dream, when he had ridden in late. After Gaston left she had gone to him, flushed and bright-eyed with sleep, and he had pulled her down on to his knee, and made her share the native coffee she detested, laughing boyishly at her face of disgust. And, holding her in his arms with her head on his shoulder, he had told her all the incidents of the day's visit to one of the other camps, and from his men and his horses drifted almost insensibly into details connected with his own plans for the future, which were really the intimate confidences of a husband to a wife who is also a comrade. The mingled pain and pleasure of the thought had made her shiver, and he had started up, declaring that she was cold, and, lifting her till his cheek was resting on hers, carried her back into the other room. But what she had done then was impossible now. He seemed so utterly strange, so different from the man whom she thought she had grown to understand. She was all at sea. She was desperately tired, her head aching and confused with the terrible problems of the future. She dared not think any more. She only wanted to lie in his arms and sob her heart out against his. She was starving for the touch of his hands, suffering horribly. She slid down on to her knees, burying her face in the couch. "Oh, God! Give me his love!" she kept whispering in agonised entreaty, until the recollection of the night, months before, when in the same posture she had prayed that God's curse might fall on him, sent a shudder through her. "I didn't mean if," she moaned. "Oh, clear God! I didn't mean it. I didn't know.... Take it back. I didn't mean it." She choked down the sobs that rose, pressing her face closer into the silken coverings.