"Well, the answer to that should be obvious," he said. "I saw you start out, and thought you were walking in your sleep--and I need hardly remind you that this is not an over-safe part of the world for that kind of exercise." "And you came to take care of me? That was very sweet of you." "If I had gone back to wake up Tarleton, you might have got to Heaven knows where by the time he was under way," went on Raynier, conscious that her tone and manner had become insidiously alluring. Was he going to drift into the common idiocy? he thought, with something of dismay. "You might have altered your course and got right away from us. Then, when I did come up with you I didn't like to wake you, because I thought it might give you a shock of sorts." "But I was not asleep--at least, I don't think I was." Raynier stared. "Not asleep? But you won't mind my saying that that is--er--rather an unusual kind of walking attire." She laughed, glancing at her wrapper. "Isn't it? The fact is I hadn't gone to bed yet I was sitting reading in the tent, and some impulse moved me to come to this place again--I can't explain it, but it was there. Yet, I must have been asleep at times, when I walked. But I was half conscious, too, that you were near to me." "Well, you did not seem surprised when you woke up, so to say, and found I was." "No. And in a way it was a waking-up. I can't explain it--unless it was a kind of sleeping consciousness." "What a strange girl you are, Miss Clive. Somehow I can't make you out at all." "No? And yet you wish you could. Am I right?" The smile she flashed at him was inexpressibly winning and sweet. Raynier recalled Haslam's dictum. Something uncanny about her, he had said--something sort of creepy. Well, there might be from the point of view of some, even of most. But what would have repelled most men appealed to him, and the proof of it was that he was conscious of no inclination to terminate this interview--rather the reverse. Still, it had to be done. "We ought to return to the camp, I think," he said, in the same unconcerned tone as though suggesting a return from an ordinary walk or ride. And she acquiesced. "I want you to promise me something," Raynier said, rather earnestly, and perhaps a little tenderly, as they wended their way back over the moon-lit wildness of the plain, and the tents of the sleeping camp were quite near, "and that is not to repeat to-night's adventure. It's anything but safe. And if the same impulse comes over you, you must combat it." "I'll almost promise that. Do you know, you are awfully unlike other men. For instance, all this time you have scarcely given a single thought to the awkwardness of this situation. Most men would have been fidgety and thinking what everyone would say, and so on." He laughed. "Magician as you are, that is not difficult to divine," he said. "What I want to get at is, how do you know I have not?"