"Splendid, plucky girl that other, you know," remarked the doctor. "I think it will be a beastly shame if Lanark makes her stop in camp to look after your precious sister."
"Don't talk to me," growled Merton. "I'm savage enough with her; she wants a good shaking, upsetting things like this."
"Everest, you're angry with me," faltered Sybil, as they got outside. "I can't help being frightened—can—can I?"
"Not altogether, I suppose," returned Everest contemptuously. "But you can help making a fuss about it. You could stay quietly in camp and not bother anybody else if you chose."
"I should have thought you would have liked to stay with me," she murmured plaintively, slipping her tiny hand through his arm. "If they all go, and Regina too, we should be in the camp all night—together—alone—we could——Oh, Everest, do; won't you?"
They were passing under the few palms that intervened between the gun tent and the dining tent. The moon was rising, but not yet very strong. His face was in the shadow and darkness. She could not see it, but she felt him let his arm fall so that her hand had no longer a resting-place, and noticed he moved from her.
"I do not think that Regina would go except with me or for me," he merely answered, but a great wave of passion for the woman he had named rose in him as he thought of that tender, eager, devoted nature longing to face death and danger for his sake.
Sybil felt silenced. She knew she had injured herself in his eyes by her fears, but it was no use her pretending to be brave; she was white and cold with fear. She did not know what to say. She felt he was angry with her, and she was almost as much afraid of him as she was of his lions.
Everest did not speak again till they reached the dining tent, in which he found her a chair, and then went on to Regina. He felt his whole being ablaze and aflame with love for her. Suddenly he hated himself for his conduct, and a resolve sprang into life that as soon as possible he would break up the present arrangement and go away alone, alone with her.... He was at her tent door and entered.
Regina sprang up. "Are we to start now?" she exclaimed joyously. She was quite ready, and looked gloriously handsome and vital and full of mettle, like a racer at the start, as she stood in the centre of the tent, flushed and smiling and animated, awaiting his commands. Everest went straight up to her and without a word caught her to him in one of those mad, passionate embraces she loved from him and never wearied of and never found too violent.