“Stevens!” Aldous chuckled.  “God bless my soul, if you frightened him into giving up a quid of tobacco like that you sure did startle him some!” He kicked Stevens’ lost property out with the toe of his boot and turned to Joanne, showing her the fresh bread and marmalade.  “Mrs. Otto sent these to you,” he said.  “And the train won’t leave until to-morrow.”

In her silence he pulled a chair in front of her, sat down close, and thrust the point of his hunting knife into one of the two remaining potatoes.

“And when it does go I’m going with you,” he added.

He expected this announcement would have some effect on her.  As she jumped up with the pan of potatoes, leaving the one still speared on the end of his knife, he caught only the corner of a bewitching smile.

“You still believe that I will be unable to take care of myself up at this terrible Tete Jaune?” she asked, bending for a moment over the table.  “Do you?”

“No.  You can care for yourself anywhere, Ladygray,” he repeated.  “But I am quite sure that it will be less troublesome for me to see that no insults are offered you than for you to resent those insults when they come.  Tete Jaune is full of Quades,” he added.

The smile was gone from her face when she turned to him.  Her blue eyes were filled with a tense anxiety.

“I had almost forgotten that man,” she whispered.  “And you mean that you would fight for me—­again?”

“A thousand times.”

The colour grew deeper in her cheeks.  “I read something about you once that I have never forgotten, John Aldous,” she said.  “It was after you returned from Thibet.  It said that you were largely made up of two emotions—­your contempt for woman and your love of adventure; that it would be impossible for you not to see a flaw in one, and that for the other—­physical excitement—­you would go to the ends of the earth.  Perhaps it is this—­your desire for adventure—­that makes you want to go with me to Tete Jaune?”

“I am beginning to believe that it will be the greatest adventure of my life,” he replied, and something in his quiet voice held her silent.  He rose to his feet, and stood before her.  “It is already the Great Adventure,” he went on.  “I feel it.  And I am the one to judge.  Until to-day I would have staked my life that no power could have wrung from me the confession I am going to make to you voluntarily.  I have laughed at the opinion the world has held of me.  To me it has all been a colossal joke.  I have enjoyed the hundreds of columns aimed at me by excited women through the press.  They have all asked the same question:  Why do you not write of the good things in women instead of always the bad?  I have never given them an answer.  But I answer you now—­here.  I have not picked upon the weaknesses of women because I despise them.  Those weaknesses—­the destroying frailties of womankind—­I have driven over rough-shod through the pages of my books