“Thank you,” she replied.  “I would have stood that a year, to be one of your Legion!  But now—­tell me!  Isn’t there any possibility of your reversing your decision?”

“None, madam.”

“Isn’t there anything I can say or do to—­”

“Remember, you told me just a minute ago you were not the type of woman who entreats!”

CHAPTER XIII

THE ENMESHING OF THE MASTER

She fell silent, biting her full lip.  Something in her eyes shamed the man.  Not for all his inflexible sternness could he feel that he had come out a winner in this, their first encounter.  A woman—­one of the despised, ignored creatures—­had deceived him.  She had disobeyed his orders.  She had flatly thrown down the gage of battle to him, that she would never leave Nissr alive.  And last, she had forced him into planning to disseminate falsehoods among his crew—­falsehoods the secret of which only she shared with him.

Unwilling as this man was to have anything in common with her, he had been obliged to have something in common—­to have much.  Something existed; a bond, even if an unpleasant one, had already stretched itself between these two—­the first secret this man ever had shared with any woman.

“Captain Alden” smiled a little.  The honors of war, so far, lay all in her camp.

The Master, feeling this to the inner marrows, humiliated, shaken, yet through it all not quite able to suppress a kind of grudging and unwilling tribute of admiration, sought to conceal his perturbation with a stern command: 

“Now, madam, I will call my orderly and have you escorted to a stateroom; have you provided with everything needful for your injury.  I trust it is not causing you any severe pain?”

“Pray don’t waste any time or thought on any injury of mine, sir!” the woman returned.

“Very well, madam!  Resume your disguise!”

She tried to sweep up her magnificent hair and secure it upon her head.  But with only one hand available this proved impossible.  They both saw there was no way for her to put on the toupee again.

She smiled oddly, with a half-whimsical, wholly feminine bit of malice.  Her eyes seemed dancing.

“I’m afraid I can’t obey you, sir,” she proffered.  “You can see for yourself, it can’t be done.”

A dull, angry flush crept over the Master’s rather pale face, and lost itself in the roots of his thick, black hair.  Perfectly well he saw that he was being cornered in an untenable position of half-command, half-intimacy.  Without apparently exercising any wiles, this woman was none the less involving him in bonds like those the Lilliputians threw round sleeping Gulliver.

Anger welled up in his proud heart that anyone—­much less a woman—­should thus lower his dignity.  But still his manhood dictated courtesy.  He came a few steps nearer, and said: