“Not so well as I should like to see you,” said Hyde, still smiling his objectionable smile.  “I believe you’re moped.  Isn’t that it?  I know the symptoms, and I know an excellent remedy, too.  Wouldn’t you like to try it?”

Hope looked at him uncertainly.  She was quivering all over with nervous apprehension.  His manner frightened her.  She was not sure that the man was absolutely sober.  But it would be absurd, ridiculous, she told her thumping heart, to take offence, when it might very well be that the insult existed in her imagination alone.  So, with a desperate courage, she stood her ground.

“I really don’t know what you mean,” she said coldly.  “But it doesn’t matter; tell me about your racer instead!”

“Not a bit of it,” returned Hyde.  “It’s one thing at a time with me always.  Besides, why should I bore you to that extent?  Why, I’m boring you already.  Isn’t that so?”

He set his hands on the arms of his chair preparatory to rising, as he spoke; and Hope took a quick step away from him.  There was a look in his eyes that was horrible to her.

“No,” she said, rather breathlessly.  “No; I’m not at all bored.  Please don’t get up; I’ll go and order some refreshment.”

“Nonsense!” he said sharply.  “I don’t want it.  I won’t have any!  I mean”—­his manner softening abruptly—–­“not unless you will join me; which, I fear, is too much to expect.  Now don’t go away!  Come and sit here!” drawing close to his own the chair on which she had been leaning.  “I want to tell you something.  Don’t look so scared!  It’s something you’ll like; it is, really.  And you’re bound to hear it sooner or later, so it may as well be now.  Why not?”

But Hope’s nerves were stretched to snapping point, and she shrank visibly.  After all, she was very young, and there was that about this man that terrified her.

“No,” she said hurriedly.  “No; I would rather not.  There is nothing you could tell me that I should like to hear.  I—­I am going to the gate to look for Ronnie.”

It was childish, it was pitiable; and had the man been other than a coward it must have moved him to compassion.  As it was he sprang up suddenly, as though to detain her, and Hope’s last shred of self-control deserted her.

She uttered a smothered cry and fled.

III

THE FRIEND IN NEED

The road that led to the cantonments was ill-made and stony, but she dashed along it like a mad creature, unconscious of everything save the one absorbing desire to escape.  Ronnie was not in sight, but she scarcely thought of him.  The light was failing fast, and she knew that it would soon be quite dark, save for a white streak of moon overhead.  It was still frightfully hot.  The atmosphere oppressed her like a leaden weight.  It seemed to keep her back, and she battled with it as with something tangible.  Her feet were clad in thin slippers, and at any other time she would have known that the rough stones cut and hurt her.  But in the terror of the moment she felt no pain.  She only had the sense to run straight on, with gasping breath and failing limbs, till at last, quite suddenly, her strength gave out and she sank, an exhausted, sobbing heap, upon the roadway.