She rose and shook her head decisively.
'No,' she answered. 'You must stay here—beside him. I will go back alone. It is better for me to tell Mrs. Wylie.'
'You are not afraid?' he inquired.
'No. I am not afraid.'
She spoke in her simple, quiet way, which was not without a certain force, despite her gentle voice. It was no boast of courage that she was making, but a plain statement of fact. She was not afraid, because she felt that it was her duty, and no soldier ever possessed a clearer, braver sense of duty than did Brenda Gilholme.
Trist walked by her side a few paces.
'I wish,' he said, 'that I could have spared you some of this.'
'Do not think of me,' she replied. 'You seem to consider me, Theo, a weak, foolish girl, who should be spared every little pain and trouble.'
'I should like...' he began, and then he stopped abruptly, so much so as to cause an awkward silence. 'Well,' he added at length in a different tone, 'I will wait here—but you must not come back. Send one of the men—the stronger of the two: Cobbold.'
'I think both the men had better come,' she suggested. They were now standing beneath the small, stunted pines upon a silent carpet of dead sweet-scented needles. As she spoke, she looked up into his face with a quiet scrutiny which was full of suggestive anxiety.