Nick’s hand fell away from her.  “You shouldn’t,” he said gently.  “It’s no good, you know.”

He returned to his former occupation while she sat with her face hidden, in a stupor of fear, afraid to move lest he should touch her again.

“Now,” said Nick, after a brief pause, “let me have the pleasure of seeing you break your fast.  There is some of that excellent boiled rice of yours here.  You will feel better when you have had some.”

She trembled at the sound of his voice.  Could he make her eat also against her will, she wondered?

“Come!” said Nick again, in a tone of soft wheedling that he might have employed to a fractious child.  “It’ll do you good, you know, Muriel.  Won’t you try?  Just a mouthful—­to please me!”

Reluctantly she uncovered her face, and looked at him.  He was kneeling in front of her, the chuddah pushed back from his face, humbly offering her an oatmeal biscuit with a small heap of rice piled upon it.

She drew back shuddering.  “I couldn’t eat anything—­possibly,” she said, and even her voice seemed to shrink.  “You can.  You take it.  I would rather die.”

Nick did not withdraw his hand.  “Take it, Muriel,” he said quietly.  “It is going to do you good.”

She flashed him a desperate glance in which anger, fear, abhorrence, were strongly mingled.  He advanced the biscuit a little nearer.  There was a queer look on his yellow face, almost a bullying look.

“Take it,” he said again.

And against her will, almost without conscious movement, she obeyed him.  The untempting morsel passed from his hand to hers, and under the compulsion of his insistence she began to eat.

She felt as if every mouthful would choke her, but she persevered, urged by the dread certainty that he would somehow have his way.

Not until the last fragment was gone did she feel his vigilance relax, but he ate nothing himself though there remained several biscuits and a very little of the rice.

“You are feeling better?” he asked her then.

A curious suspicion that he was waiting to tell her something made her answer almost feverishly in the affirmative.  It amounted to a premonition of evil tidings, and instinctively her thoughts flew to her father.

“What is it?” she questioned nervously.  “You have something to say.”

Nick’s face was turned from her.  He seemed to be gazing across the ravine.

“Yes,” he said, after a moment.

“Oh, what?” she broke in.  “Tell me quickly—­quickly!  It is my father, I know, I know.  He has been hurt—­wounded—­”

She stopped.  Nick had lifted one hand as if to silence her.  “My dear,” he said, his voice very low, “your father died last night—­before we left the fort.”

At her cry of agony he started up, and in a second he was on his knees by her side and had gathered her to him as though she had been a little child in need of comfort.  She did not shrink from him in her extremity.  The blow had been too sudden, too overwhelming.  It blotted out all lesser sensibilities.  In those first terrible moments she did not think of Nick at all, was scarcely conscious of his presence, though she vaguely felt the comfort of his arms.