She struck an exaggerated attitude of horrified consternation.
"But no! Why am I here?"
"The Lord only knows. I've seen a hen peck at a lump of dynamite...."
"Ah, you never will take me seriously. But own in your secret heart you're as much afraid as I am that a Relieving Column will be sent down from—— Do tell me again where Grumer is with the Brigade? Uli, in Upper Rhodesia—thanks! Well, Grumer is quite a near friend of Bingo's, and an old flame of mine. But—to burst our lovely peacock bubble of Siege and let the whole situation down, sans coup férir, into muddy commonplace—may Grumer never come!" She held up her coffee-cup, and drank the toast.
"Only for the women and children here," he said, and his thin nostrils moved to the measure of his quickened breathing, and a hot spark glowed in his keen eyes, "I'd have joined you in that. But under the present circumstances—I'd give five years of life—and I love life!—if our lookouts could pick up Grumer's Advance by the time grey dawn creeps up the east again."
She was incredulous.
"You, who said when you got orders to sail for South Africa—I have it on the authority of your Henley hostess—'I hope they'll give me a warm corner'!"
"I did say—just that. And I meant it."
His lips pursed in a soundless whistle. She went on:
"I've seen your preparations. The little old forts, put into such repair! and the armoured train, with a Maxim and a Hotchkiss, standing in the Railway siding, ready for business. And the earthworks! And the trek-waggon barricades, and the shelters panelled and roofed with corrugated iron. And your bomb-proof Headquarter Bureau, the iron skull that's to hold the working brain of the place ... with underground telegraphic and telephonic communications with all the forts and outposts. It's colossal! A masterpiece of cool, deadly, lethal forethought.... I thought I was incapable of the delicious shiver of expectation that the schoolboy enjoys, sitting in the stalls of dear Old Drury, waiting for the curtain to rise on the first act of the Autumn Drama. But you've given it to me—you and our friends out there!" She waved the dry little glittering hand. "And you can talk in cold blood of marching out—and leaving the hive—and all the honey you might have had out of it. Sweet danger, perilous sport, the great Game of War—played as a man like you knows how to play it in this little sandy world-arena, with all the Powers and Dominions looking on. Preserve us! Oh, to be in your shoes this minute, if only for one week! But as I can't, it's you I hope to see riding the whirlwind and directing the storm. Not only for my own sake and the wretched paper's—though, mind you, I don't pretend to be anything but a mercenary, calculating worldly creature ..."