“Heaven knows what you did it for,” he said, seeming to control his voice with some difficulty.  “It wasn’t for your own sake, and I won’t presume to think it was for mine.  But when the time comes for handing round rewards, may it be remembered that your offering was something more substantial than a cup of cold water.”

He broke off with a queer sound in the throat, and began to move away.

But Muriel followed him, an unaccountable sense of responsibility overcoming her reluctance.

“Nick!” she said.

He stood still without turning.  She had a feeling that he was putting strong restraint upon himself.  With an effort she forced herself to continue.

“You want sleep, I know.  Will you—­will you lie down while I watch?”

He shook his head without looking at her.

“But I wish it,” she persisted.  “I can wake you if—­anything happens.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” said Nick.

“I suppose that means you are afraid to trust me,” she said.

He turned at that.  “It means nothing of the sort.  But you’ve had one scare, and you may have another.  I think myself that that fellow was a scout on the look-out for Bassett’s advance guard.  But Heaven only knows what brought him to this place, and there may be others.  That’s why I didn’t dare to shoot.”

He paused, his light eyebrows raised, surveying her questioningly; for Muriel had suddenly covered her face with both hands.  But in another moment she looked up again, and spoke with an effort.

“Your being awake couldn’t lessen the danger.  Won’t you—­please—­be reasonable about it?  I am doing my best.”

There was a deep note of appeal in her voice, and abruptly Nick gave in.

He moved back to their resting-place without another word, and flung himself face downwards beside the nest of fern that he had made for her, lying stretched at full length like a log.

She had not expected so sudden and complete a surrender.  It took her unawares, and she stood looking down at him, uncertain how to proceed.

But after a few seconds he turned his head towards her and spoke.

“You’ll stay by me, Muriel?”

“Of course,” she answered, that unwonted sense of responsibility still strongly urging her.

He murmured something unintelligible, and stirred uneasily.  She knew in a flash what he wanted, but a sick sense of dread held her back.  She felt during the silence that followed as though he were pleading with her, urging her, even entreating her.  Yet still she resisted, standing near him indeed, but with a desperate reluctance at her heart, a shrinking unutterable from the bare thought of any closer proximity to him that was as the instinctive recoil of purity from a thing unclean.

The horror of his deed had returned upon her over-whelmingly with his brief reference to it.  His lack of emotion seemed to her as hideous callousness, more horrible than the deed itself.  His physical exhaustion had called her out of herself, but the reaction was doubly terrible.