The suspicion of a tremor in her brave smile caught at his heart. He pressed her shoulder with a reassuring hand.
"Sorry Olliver couldn't see you before leaving," he said gently. "Hullo, there's Paul; I must be off. God bless you for a plucky woman, Frank. We'll all get back—sometime, never fear." And in an instant she was alone.
Nothing remained but to blow out the lamp and set the screened night-light on a table farthest from the outer doors. Its uncertain flicker served to make darkness visible and through the darkness she crept back to her station by the bed.
Denvil, who had fallen into an unrefreshing sleep, stirred and tossed with broken mutterings that threatened every moment to break out into the babble of delirium; and for a while she sat beside him in a stunned quietness, her ears strained to catch the sounds that came up from below—the hasty gathering of men and horses and mules; the jingle of harness; brisk words of command; the tramping of many feet. Comforting sounds, since they spoke of the protective presence of Englishmen.
But those that followed were less reassuring, for they were sounds of massed movement, of an organised body under way: the muffled tread of infantry, the cheerful clatter of cavalry at the trot. She knew the order of their going, to the minutest detail. A vision of it all was photographed upon her brain as she had witnessed it these many times within the past ten years; and perhaps owing to the mental vividness of her race, custom had not yet ground the edge off the poignant moment of departure.
Rapidly, inexorably, the sounds retreated toward the hills; and as they drew farther away she listened the more intently. It was as if her spirit, freed from her body, followed the men she loved, till the unheeding night absorbed them—till hearing, stretched to its utmost limit, could catch no lightest echo of sound.
Then silence, intensified by stifling darkness, enveloped her, pressing in upon heart and brain like an invisible force that held her prisoner against her will.
The practical side of her fought squarely against this obsession of the intangible; but it persisted and prevailed. The mocking shadows crowded about her, compelled her to a discomfortable realisation of her solitude in a station needing the perpetual alertness of armed men to ensure peace and safety. For Kohat city boasted a creditable average of bad characters and murder cases—a corpse more or less on the Border being of no more consequence than the fall of a sparrow; and the Waziris had of late been unusually daring in regard to Government horses and carbines. Nor was it an unknown thing for them to creep past the sentries on very black nights into the station itself; and for all her courage, Frank Olliver was by no means fearless. The two are a contradiction in terms. Only the unimaginative are fearless, and only the keenly imaginative, capable of feeling fear in every fibre, ever scale the heights of true courage.