an hour later terrington returned, and the march recommenced. the bridge had been strengthened, but even so it looked perilous enough, and rose, after seeing one of the mules lurch over and burst to a pulp on the rocks beneath, preferred to walk across with a rope about her than to be carried in the doolie.
afterwards she fell asleep and was only wakened when terrington drew aside the curtain and told her that it was time for dinner. the doolie was on the ground again, but the night was black about it and a cold air seemed to be pouring down out of the sky.
rose shivered as she pushed the curtains aside and stepped out into the darkness. spaces of pitchy gloom on either side of her, and a sparkling riband of stars overhead showed the force to be still in the defile, but something ghostlike and pale seemed to come between the stony blackness and the stars. it was the light of the snows.
a few yards beyond the doolie a fire flickered, over which gholam was leaning, peering into a pot; and further off some score of camp-fires pierced the darkness with clear pointed cones of flame.
as she came into the circle of the firelight terrington appeared beside her, the poshteen in his hand.
"sleep well?" he asked as he helped her arms into it, and turning her round towards him by the collar, buttoned the frogs across her chest as though she were a child.
"it fits you proper!" he proclaimed, surveying her at arm's length.
she smiled at his motherly vigilance, but felt with keen happiness its protective care. he made her feel so completely in his charge that, had he given her a kiss as he buttoned her coat, it would have seemed no more than she had been accustomed to from others who had dressed her.
he drew a stool for her to the fire, recounted the humorous mischances of the journey while she had been asleep, and jested over the ingredients in the stew which gholam was making them.
the frank fraternity in his manner increased her sense of a girlhood which had come back to her. she sat listening to his talk with the smiling happy-serious air of youth. and they ate together of the stew with great relish despite the suggestions he proposed to find in its bones. and when they had finished the modest little dinner, terrington spread a rug beside the fire, and they sat close to the red verge of it, for comfort of the warmth; rose, resting on her wrist, with her feet tucked under her, girlishly erect, and with the big collar of the poshteen turned up about her ears, but terrington, at greater ease, leaning upon his elbow with his body bent towards the flames.
rose, however, did not have him altogether to herself. the approach of action was signalled by a succession of orderlies, for whom brief notes had to be written, and hussain shah arrived later for a consultation.
still, despite its interruptions the time seemed to her the most delightful she had ever spent. she was tasting for the first time what it meant to feel.
the blazing fire pushed the night back from a brief circle about them, and, when the flame fell, the darkness seemed to leap forward like a black thing with wings trying to spring from behind upon their shoulders.
in the darkness was the unknown morrow, and death, and the blood and horror of battle; and in the firelight just the man and herself; the man who was showing her a new unknown kind of manliness, and herself with all her married days and ways forgot, listening like a girl to her first discovery in heroes.
"time to turn in," said terrington, as he came back out of the darkness on parting from hussain. "we start at two; and no one can say when we sleep again, so do all you know. i'll see if your doolie is ready."
she turned out one little hand to the flame with a shiver.
"oh, i can't leave the fire," she said. "mayn't i sleep here?"
he looked at her with the air of considering her request as a reasonable proposition.
"i don't see why you shouldn't," he said; "i'll fetch your blankets."
he fetched the mattress as well, and the boots he had given her, which he happened to find inside the doolie.
"you must wear these," he said, "if you sleep out."
she took them from him with a sigh of submission, sat down upon the mattress and prepared to pull them on.
"don't put your hand into them," he said warningly.
she opened her eyes in question.
"it may make you cry," he smiled.
she repaid his memory with a glance of pleased surprise, and shook her head softly.
"not now!" she said.
she held up the boot towards him, and thrust her arm down into its depths.
"so warm," she purred.
she covered her shyness in pulling them on before him with the pretence that they were much too tight.
terrington smiled at her efforts.
"i'm afraid you'll grow out of them very soon," he said.
then he tucked her in under the blankets and wrapping himself in his cloak lay down beside her. she risked the comfort in which he had arranged her to stretch out a small white hand to him to say good-night; and he held it long enough to express to her the subtle newness and nearness in their common knowledge that such a night might mean.
rose seemed only to have just ceased to watch the changing colour of the flame on terrington's face when a hand was laid on her shoulder and his voice spoke in her ear. she jumped up, dreaming of battles, so stiff that she would have fallen but for the arm which he put under hers. the doolie suddenly appeared out of the darkness, he helped her in, bade her good-bye with a clasp of the hand, dropped a sharp order to the sentry who strode beside her, and was gone. the bearers moved off at a quick amble, and when they halted she knew she was amongst men. the night was still of an impenetrable black and she could see nothing between her curtains, but she heard in the silence the shuffle of feet, and the grunted "huh!" of the bakót men as they fell in half awake and hitched up their accoutrements.
then with a whisper the jampanis moved on, and to the swinging to and fro of the doolie she fell asleep.
