He had stopped, and she was looking up to him, half-smiling, half-entreating, wholly alluring.  He looked down into her dark face, with a sudden quickening about the heart.

“And all this fighting,” she continued, as though he were to be convinced of something.  “You conquer men as though you were bred on the roofs of Mozambique.  You fight like—­like a hero.  It is a rush, a blow, a tumble, and you have them lying at your feet.  And when you remember all this, will you not be glad, friend—­will you not be glad that it was for me?”

He nodded, clearing his throat huskily.  Her hand on his shoulder was a thing to charm him to fire.

“I’d fight—­I’d fight for you,” he replied uneasily, “as long as—­as long as there was any one to fight.”

He was feeling his way in speech, as best he could, past conventionalities.  There had dawned on him, duskily and half-seen, the unfitness of little proprieties and verbose frills while he went to war across the roofs with this woman of passion.

“You would,” she said fervently, with half-closed eyes.  “I know you would.”

She dropped her hand, and stood beside him in silence.  There was a long pause.  He guessed she was waiting for the next move from him, and he nerved himself to be adequate to her unspoken demand.

“You lead on,” he said at last unsteadily.

“Where?” she asked breathlessly.

He did not speak, but waved an open hand that gave her the freedom of choice.  It was his surrender to the wild spirit of the Coast, and he grasped the head of the brass image the tighter when he had done it.  She and Fate must guide now; it rested with him only to break opposing heads.

She smiled and shivered.  “Come on, then,” she said, and started before him.

They traversed perhaps a score of roofs enclosed with high parapets, on to each of which he lifted her, hands in her armpits, swinging her cleanly to the level of his face and planting her easily and squarely on the coping.  He welcomed each opportunity to take hold of her and put out the strength of his muscles, and she sat where he placed her, smiling and silent, while he clambered up and dropped down on the other side.

At length a creaking wooden stair that hung precariously on the sheer side of a house brought them again to the ground level.  It was another gloomy alley into which they descended, and the darkness about him and the mud underfoot struck Dawson with a sense of being again in familiar surroundings.  The woman’s hand slid into his as he stood, and they started along again together.

The alley seemed to be better frequented than that of which he already had experience.  More than once dark, sheeted figures passed them by, noiseless save for the underfoot swish in the mud, and presently the alley widened into a little square, at one side of which there was a fresh rustle of green things.  At the side of it a dim light showed through a big open door, from which came a musical murmur of voices, and Dawson recognized a church.