“Oh, how can he? how can he?” she demanded of herself. “To care for me so tremendously after the way I have treated him--a man who can do such splendid things! How can I ever meet him? I daren’t face him. He’ll guess. I should be too dreadfully ashamed to let him know I have changed so suddenly. It seemed to come all at once. Oh, why didn’t I care for him a little before? why did I say those awful things to him only the other day? why did I let even Flora see what a mean wretch I was? She said herself that I was mean. And now they’ll all think it’s just because he deserves the V.C. that I care for him, and it’s not. It isn’t what he did, but what he is--but no one will believe it. He has been quite as splendid all the time, and I never saw it; and when he speaks to me again, he’ll think that I--I am different to him just because he didn’t leave Sultan Jān to die. As if that signified! It’s--it’s simply because he cares for me that I care for him.” These considerations, though they might seem somewhat inconsistent with one another, made Mabel sit down in despair to think the matter out. First of all, how was she to nerve herself to meet Fitz again? and next, how was he to be brought to perceive the delicate distinction, that she loved him not because he had done a great thing, but because the doing of it had revealed his real self to her? “I know,” she said to herself at last; “I will meet him just as usual. I think I have pride and self-respect enough left for that, and when he speaks to me again I won’t accept him at once. I won’t refuse him again, of course, or at any rate, not definitely. I will be kinder, and give him a little hope. Then he will feel at liberty to try again,” she laughed nervously; “and I can give in by degrees, so that he will understand how it really is. Oh dear! how glad I am that he made that condition the other day.”