"I can hardly imagine anyone needing any incentive to that from me," he said.
Meryl glanced at him humorously. Some new phase she had detected in him, since Diana persisted in what she called "baiting" him, made her more ready to overlook his bearishness and less quick to feel repulsed.
"Will you take me if I promise not to ask any silly questions?" she asked, with a smile.
He looked up, and for a brief moment the past seemed to lie still as one that is dead. His keen, direct eyes looked straight into hers, and he said simply, "I should like to take you."
Meryl felt her cheeks glow a little with sudden, swift, indefinable pleasure, and almost at the same moment Diana broke in upon them.
"Do you know, Major Carew, your singularly appropriate nickname has been subjected to a little embroidery?... You are now called, after the Cœur de Lion, 'The Bear with two faces.'" All in a moment he stiffened and the shadow loomed; and while Meryl wondered Diana ran on unheedingly, "If I say to you when we meet, 'Which face is it to-day?' you will know that I mean, is it your day of lordly graciousness, or is it the cast-iron, beware-of-the-bull frown day?"
"I think you are excessively rude, Diana," Meryl said, though she smiled with the rest.
Carew smiled too, but he rose from his seat and moved away on some small pretence.
And as he went, Meryl, watching with eyes that were daily gaining clearer sight, saw that the shadow was as of some deep, unfathomable pain.
She too got up and moved a little away from the rest, gazing with grave, tender eyes across the kopjes, lying how bathed in a faint ethereal flush of rose and gold.