"I shall come," she answered deliberately. "And I shall see the snake-bite on his arm and think of the story of the man who saved him."
Tristram had gone. She laughed a little and then fell to her old brooding contemplation of the picture at her elbow. But when he returned with the promised teapot and a plate of sandwiches she pushed it impatiently from her.
"Tell me, Major Tristram, are you glad I've broken into your sanctuary?" she asked abruptly.
He poured her tea out for her with a hand that shook a little.
"I don't know——"
"That's ungracious, Major Tristram. But you're altogether unexpected. Even this room-it's not a man's room. Where are your guns, your skins, your trophies?"
He looked about him, flushing to the roots of his fair, untidy hair.
"I haven't got any—I never had a gun of my own. I've got an Army pistol somewhere in the kitchen, but it's got rusty and I don't know what would happen if I fired it." He put the sandwiches near to her and then stalked across to the doorway and sat down cross-legged on the rug, his irregular profile cut sharply against the light. "I can't kill things," he said doggedly.
"Go on, Major Tristram. I am getting almost excited. A man who can't kill things!"
He heard the irony in her voice and winced, but did not look at her.