“Have you?” she answered sweetly.
“Good God! Need you ask? But it is a fitting reply to an idiotic question.”
“Don’t be profane, and don’t call yourself undeserved names, dearest. But you don’t look as if you had had any sleep. Have you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I couldn’t have slept if I’d tried,” he said, the soft caressing solicitude of the remark stirring through his whole being. “But that’ll all come right. I’m hard as nails, remember.”
“I should think you were,” flashing up at him another admiring glance. “Oh, darling, I loved to see you yesterday. The sight of you went far to neutralise all the horrors of the situation.”
“Don’t, don’t,” he said, rather unsteadily, positively intoxicated with the sweetness of her tones, her looks. “Don’t quite try to give me ‘swelled head’ as those good chaps were trying to do last night. Because you might succeed, you know.”
“You could never get that. But—I have something to say to you, and I don’t believe you’re going to grant me the very first thing I’ve ever asked you.”
“And that—?”
“I want you not to run into danger any more. You belong to me now—we belong to each other. If this is going to be a regular war—perhaps a long one—there can be no necessity for you to take part in it—I mean, to join expeditions, and all that. You will be helping quite enough by staying to defend Gandela, and taking care of me.”
He looked troubled.