The total freedom from all anxiety or restraint with which he made this simple observation served to restore to some degree the girl’s tottering self-control.  She sat up, sufficiently recovered to remember that she did not like this man.

“Pray have some if you want it,” she said coldly.

He turned his back on it abruptly.  “No, don’t tempt me,” he said.  “It’s a fast day for me.  I’m acquiring virtue, being conspicuously destitute of all other forms of comfort.  Why don’t you eat it yourself?  Are you acquiring virtue too?”

He stood looking down at her quizzically, under rapidly flickering eyelids.  She sat silent, wishing with all her heart that he would go away.

Nothing, however, was apparently further from his thoughts.  After a moment he sat down in the chair that her father had occupied an hour before.  It was very close to her, and she drew herself slightly away with a small, instinctive movement of repugnance.  But Nick was sublimely impervious to hints.

“I say, you know,” he said abruptly, “you shouldn’t take opium.  Your donkey of an ayah ought to know better than to let you have it.”

Muriel gave a great start.  “I don’t”—­she faltered.  “I—­I—­”

He shook his head at her, as though reproving a child.  “Pussy’s out,” he observed.  “It is no good giving chase.  But really, you know, you mustn’t do it.  You used to be a brave girl once, and now your nerves are all to pieces.”

There was a species of paternal reproach in his tone.  Looking at him, she marvelled that she had ever thought him young and headlong.  Almost in spite of herself she began to murmur excuses.

“I can’t help it.  I must have something.  I don’t sleep.  I lie for hours, listening to the fighting.  It—­it’s more than I can bear.”  Her voice quivered, and she turned her face aside, unable to hide her emotion, but furious with herself for displaying it.

Nick said nothing at all to comfort her, and she bitterly resented his silence.  After a pause he spoke again, as if he had banished the matter entirely from his mind.

“Look here,” he said.  “I want you to tell me something.  I don’t know what sort of a fellow you think I am, though I fancy you don’t like me much.  But you’re not afraid of me, are you?  You know I’m to be trusted?”

It was her single chance of revenge, and she took it.  “I have my father’s word for it,” she said.

He nodded thoughtfully as if unaware of the thrust.  “Yes, your father knows me.  And so”—­he smiled at her suddenly—­“you are ready to trust me on his recommendation?  You are ready to follow me blindfold through danger if I give you my hand to hold?”

She felt a sharp chill strike her heart.  What was it he was asking of her?  What did those words of his portend?

“I don’t know,” she said.  “I don’t see that it makes much difference how I feel.”

“Well, it does,” he assured her.  “And that is exactly what I have come to talk about.  Miss Roscoe, will you leave the fort with me, and escape in disguise?  I have thought it all out, and it can be done without much difficulty.  I do not need to tell you that the idea has your father’s full approval.”