Growing daily stronger, Muriel’s half-childish panic regarding her approaching marriage as steadily diminished.  She enjoyed her rides with Nick, becoming daily more and more at her ease with him.  They seldom touched upon intimate matters.  She wore his ring, and once she shyly thanked him for it.  But he made no further reference to the words engraved within it, and she was relieved by his forbearance.

Nick, on his part, was visiting Daisy Musgrave every day, and sedulously imbibing her woman’s wisdom.  He had immense faith in her insight and her intuition, and when she entreated him to move slowly and without impatience he took a sterner grip of himself and resolutely set himself to cultivate the virtue she urged upon him.

“You mustn’t do anything in a hurry,” Daisy assured him, “either before your marriage or after.  She has had a very bad shock, and she is only just getting over it.  You will throw everything back if you try to precipitate matters.  She is asleep, you know, Nick, and it is for you to waken her, but gradually—­oh, very gradually—­or she will start up in the old nightmare terror again.  If she doesn’t love you yet, she is very near it.  But you will only win her by waiting for her.  Never do anything sudden.  Always remember what a child she is, though she has outgrown her years.  And children, you know, though they will trust those they love to the uttermost, are easily frightened.”

Nick knew that she was right.  He knew also that he was steadily gaining ground, and that knowledge helped him more than all Daisy’s counsels.  He was within sight, so he felt, of the great consummation of all his desires, and he was drawing daily nearer.

Their wedding-day was little more than a week away.  He had already made full preparation for it.  It was to be as quiet a ceremony as it was possible to arrange.  Daisy Musgrave had promised to be there, and he expected her husband also.  Lady Bassett, whose presence he realised with a grimace to be indispensable, would complete the wedding-party.

He had arranged to leave Simla directly the service was over, and to go into Nepal.  It would not be his first visit to that most wonderful country, and it held many things that he desired to show her.  He expected much from that wedding journey, from the close companionship, the intimacy that must result.  He would teach her first beyond all doubting that she had nothing to fear, and then—­then at last, as the reward of infinite patience, he would win her love.  His blood quickened whenever he thought of it.  Alone with her once more among the mountains, in perfect security, surrounded by the glory of the eternal snows, so he would win her.  They would come back closely united, equipped to face the whole world hand-in-hand, so joined together that no shadow of evil could ever come between them any more.  For they would be irrevocably made one.  Thus ran the current of his splendid dream, and for this he curbed himself, mastered his eagerness, controlled his passion.