for some little time, she thinking about their curious acquaintance, and wondering when it would end.  Of course it would end—­she knew that; it was a thing of mind only; there was very little feeling about it—­a certain mutual interest and a liking that had grown of late, kindness on his part, gratitude on hers, nothing more.  But of its sort it had grown to be intimate; she had told him things of her thoughts, and of herself, and her people too, that she had told to no one else; and he, which was perhaps more remarkable, had sometimes returned the compliment.  And yet by and by—­soon, perhaps—­he would go away, and it would be as if they had never met; it was like people on a steamer together, she thought, for the space of the voyage they saw each other daily, saw more intimately into each other than many blood relations did, and then, when port was reached, they separated, the whole thing finished.  She wondered when this would finish, and just then Rawson-Clew spoke, and unconsciously answered her thought.

“I am going back to England soon,” he said.

She looked up.  “Is your work here finished?” she asked.

“It is at an end,” he answered; “that is the same thing.”

Then she, her intuition enlightened by a like experience suddenly knew that he, too, had failed.  “You mean it cannot be done,” she said.

He opened his cigarette case, and selected a cigarette carefully.  “May I smoke?” he asked; “there are a good many gnats and mosquitoes about here.”  He felt for a match, and, when he had struck it, asked impersonally, “Do you believe things cannot be done?”

“Yes,” she answered; “I know that sometimes they cannot; I have proved it to myself.”

“You have not, then, much opinion of the people who do not know when they are beaten?”

“I don’t think I have,” she answered; “you cannot help knowing when you are beaten if you really are—­that is, unless you are a fool.  Of course, if you are only beaten in one round, or one effort, that is another thing; you can get up and try again.  But if you are really and truly beaten, by yourself, or circumstances, or something—­well, there’s an end; there is nothing but to get up and go on.”

“Just so; in that case, as you say, there is not much going to be done, except going home.”

Julia nodded.  “But I can’t even do that,” she said.  “I am beaten, but I have got to stay here all the same, having nowhere exactly to go.”

This was the first time she had spoken even indirectly of her own future movements.  “But, perhaps,” he suggested, “if you stay, you may find a back way to your object after all.”

She shook her head.  “It is the back way I tried.  No, there is no way; it is blocked.  I know, because it is myself that blocks it.”

“In that case,” he said, “I’m afraid I must agree with you; there is no way; oneself is about the most insurmountable block of all.  I might have known that you were hardly likely to make any mistake as to whether you were really beaten or not.”