This announcement was received with great applause. Then, paper and pen having been requisitioned, every man there put down his name, pledging himself to serve in the corps and also to do all he could to induce desirable men to join it too.
Lamont had left them after his address, and was now examining the defences of the place. As he stood in the gathering darkness it was with a strange tingle of the pulses that he reflected upon the scene he had just left. This popularity to which he had thus suddenly sprung was not a little strange, in fact it was a little aweing. In what light would Clare Vidal view it? And then, at the thought of Clare, he felt more than devoutly grateful that he had been the means of saving her from a horrible death—and with it there intruded for the first time another thought. Had he thus saved her for himself?
Yes. The frozen horror with which he had received the announcement that morning, that she was advancing deeper and deeper into certain peril, and causing him to lose sight of his own fatigue and recent hardships, to start off then and there to her aid, had opened his eyes; but—was it for good or for ill?
“There you are at last, Mr Lamont,” said Clare, as he entered the living-room of the place. “We have been wondering what had become of you.”
She was alone. There was a something in her tone, even in her look, which he had not noticed before—a sort of gravity, as though the old fun and brightness had taken to itself wings.
“I’ve been going around seeing to things. Where’s Mrs Fullerton?”
“Gone to bed. She’s got a splitting headache, and seems to have got a kind of frightened shock. Dick is with her now, but I’m going directly.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. It has been a trying enough day for any woman, Heaven knows. But you, Miss Vidal. There isn’t a man in the whole outfit that isn’t talking of your splendid pluck.”
She smiled, rather wanly he thought, and shook her head.
“I wish they’d forget it then. I wish I could. Oh, Mr Lamont—I have killed—men.”