The frank fraternity in his manner increased her sense of a girlhood which had come back to her. She sat listening to his talk with the smiling happy-serious air of youth. And they ate together of the stew with great relish despite the suggestions he proposed to find in its bones. And when they had finished the modest little dinner, Terrington spread a rug beside the fire, and they sat close to the red verge of it, for comfort of the warmth; Rose, resting on her wrist, with her feet tucked under her, girlishly erect, and with the big collar of the poshteen turned up about her ears, but Terrington, at greater ease, leaning upon his elbow with his body bent towards the flames.
Rose, however, did not have him altogether to herself. The approach of action was signalled by a succession of orderlies, for whom brief notes had to be written, and Hussain Shah arrived later for a consultation.
Still, despite its interruptions the time seemed to her the most delightful she had ever spent. She was tasting for the first time what it meant to feel.
The blazing fire pushed the night back from a brief circle about them, and, when the flame fell, the darkness seemed to leap forward like a black thing with wings trying to spring from behind upon their shoulders.
In the darkness was the unknown morrow, and death, and the blood and horror of battle; and in the firelight just the man and herself; the man who was showing her a new unknown kind of manliness, and herself with all her married days and ways forgot, listening like a girl to her first discovery in heroes.
"Time to turn in," said Terrington, as he came back out of the darkness on parting from Hussain. "We start at two; and no one can say when we sleep again, so do all you know. I'll see if your doolie is ready."
She turned out one little hand to the flame with a shiver.
"Oh, I can't leave the fire," she said. "Mayn't I sleep here?"
He looked at her with the air of considering her request as a reasonable proposition.
"I don't see why you shouldn't," he said; "I'll fetch your blankets."