Regina's had been an appeal that she might come into danger to protect him.
"What nonsense is this, Sybil?" he answered impatiently. "We've been waiting all this time for our chance, and now you make a silly fuss about it! Don't you want to come with us after all?"
"Come with you?" stammered the girl, while her teeth chattered. "No, no, no, I couldn't."
"Well, then, you can stay at home," he returned curtly.
"That's what I've been telling her," interrupted Merton, "and she wants one of us to stay, too. I'll be hanged if I'm going to now after the rotten time we've had so far."
Sybil sank again on her camp-stool. Literally she could not stand up, her knees were knocking together, her limbs crumpling up beneath her. She was cold with fear.
"Well, why can't the two women stay and look after each other?" asked St John, who was standing, his feet apart, his hands deep in the pockets of his Norfolk jacket, staring at the little figure in the centre of the tent. "We'll get on heaps better without them; responsibility, you know, having women about."
"Regina! What good would she be?" answered Sybil.
"Regina would be as good as any of us," returned the doctor rather fiercely. "She's a better shot than any one of us, bar Lanark, and she's no fear of anything—she's Courage itself."
Sybil was too terrified to heed or care for the obvious comparison.