“Of course,” she said at length, “of course, Paul, I admire you for it immensely.  It is just like you to go and do the thing quietly and say nothing about it; but—­oh, you must go away from here.  I—­I—­it is too horrible to think of your running such risks.  Rather let them all die like flies than that.  You mustn’t do it.  You mustn’t.”

She spoke in English hurriedly, with a little break in her voice which he did not understand.

“With ordinary precautions the risk is very small,” he said practically.

“Yes.  But do you take ordinary precautions?  Are you sure you are all right now?”

She stopped.  They were quite alone in the one silent street of the stricken village.  She looked up into his face.  Her hands were running over the breast of the tattered coat he wore.  It was lamentably obvious, even to him, that she loved him.  In her anxiety she either did not know what she was doing, or she did not care whether he knew or not.  She merely gave sway to the maternal instinct which is in the love of all women.  She felt his hands; she reached up and touched his face.

“Are you sure—­are you sure you have not taken it?” she whispered.

He walked on, almost roughly.

“Oh, yes; quite,” he said.

“I will not allow you to go into any more houses in Thors.  I cannot—­I will not!  Oh, Paul, you don’t know.  If you do, I will tell them all who you are, and—­and the Government will stop you.”

“What would be the good of that?” said Paul awkwardly.  “Your father cared for his peasants, and was content to run risks for them.  I suppose you care about them, too, as you go into their houses.”

“Yes; but—­”

She paused, gave a strange little reckless laugh, and was silent.  Heaven forbid that we should say that she wanted him to know that she loved him.  Chivalry bids us believe that women guard the secret of their love inviolate from the world.  But what was Catrina to do?  Men are in the habit of forgetting that plain women are women at all.  Surely some of them may be excused for reminding us at times that they also are capable of loving—­that they also desire to be loved.  Happy is the man who loves and is loved of a plain woman; for she will take her own lack of beauty into consideration, and give him more than most beautiful women have it in their power to give.

“Of course,” Catrina went on, with a sudden anger which surprised herself, “I cannot stop you from doing this at Osterno, though I think it is wicked; but I can prevent you from doing it here, and I certainly shall!”

Paul shrugged his shoulders.

“As you like,” he said.  “I thought you cared more about the peasants.”

“I do not care a jot about the peasants,” she answered passionately, “as compared—­It is you I am thinking about, not them.  I think you are selfish, and cruel to your friends.”

“My friends have never shown that they are consumed with anxiety on my account.”