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“I don’t know what to say to you, Major Hone,” she said, after a moment. “I don’t know even what you expect me to say, since you expressly tell me that you are not trifling.”

“Faith!” he broke in impetuously. “And is it trifling I’d be with the only woman I ever loved or ever wanted? I’m not asking you to flirt. I’m asking a bigger thing of you than that. I’m asking you–Princess, I’m asking you to stay–and be my wife.”

He drew nearer to her, but he made no attempt to touch her. Only the flame of his passion seemed to reach her, to scorch her, for she made a slight movement away from him.

She looked at him doubtfully. “I still don’t know what to say,” she said.

His face altered. With a mighty effort he subdued the fiery impulse that urged him to override her doubts and fears, to take and hold her in his arms, to make her his with or without her will.

He became in a trice the kindly, winning personality that all his world knew and loved. “Sure then, you’re not afraid of me?” he said, as though he softly cajoled a child. “It wouldn’t be yourself at all if you were, you that could tread me underfoot like a centipede and not be a mite the worse.”

She smiled a little, smiled and uttered a sudden quick sigh. “Don’t you think you are rather a fool, Pat?” she said. “I gave you credit for more shrewdness. You certainly had more once.”

“What do you mean?” There was a sharp note of pain in Hone’s voice.

She moved restlessly across the room and paused with her back to him. “None but a fool would conclude that because a woman is pretty she must be good as well,” she said, a tremor of bitterness in her voice. “Why do you take it for granted in this headlong fashion that I am all that man could desire?”

“You are all that I want,” he said.

She shook her head. “The woman who lived inside me died long ago,” she said, “and a malicious spirit took her place.”

“None but yourself would ever dare to say that to me,” said Hone. “And I won’t listen even to you. Princess–“

“You are not to call me that!” She rounded upon him suddenly, a fierce gleam in her eyes. “You must never–never–“

She broke off. He was close to her, with that on his face that stilled her protest. He gathered her to him with a tenderness that yet was irresistible.

“Sure, then,” he whispered, with a whimsical humour that cloaked all deeper feeling, “you shall be my queen instead, for by the saints I swear that in some form or other I was created to be your slave.”

And though she averted her face and after a moment withdrew herself from his arms, she raised no further protest. She suffered him to plant the flag of his supremacy unhindered.

VIII

Certainly the colonel’s wife was in her element. A wedding in the regiment, and that the wedding of its idolized hero, was to her an affair of almost more importance than anything that had happened since her own. The church had been fully decorated under her directions, and she had turned it into as elegant a reception room as circumstances permitted. White favours had been distributed to the dusky warriors under Hone’s command who lined the aisle. All was in readiness, from the bridegroom, resplendent in scarlet and gold, waiting in the chancel with Teddy Duncombe, the best man, to the buzzing guests who swarmed in at the west door to be received by the colonel’s wife, who in her capacity of hostess seemed to be everywhere at once.

“She was quite ready when I left, and looking sweet,” so ran the story to one after another. “Oh, yes, in her travelling dress, of course. That had to be. But quite bridal–the palest silver grey. She looks quite charming, and such a girl. No one would ever think–” and so on, to innumerable acquaintances, ending where she had begun–“yes, she was quite ready when I left, and looking sweet!”