“And I am his wife—­I belong to him!” she cried, almost aloud.

She pressed both her hands tightly against her breast, and set her teeth, fighting to keep down the rising flood that threatened to sweep away her composure.  “Oh, what a fool I am!  What an hysterical fool of a woman I am!” she whispered below her breath.  She began to walk slowly up and down outside the tent, in the space illumined by the lamplight, as though striving to make her outwardly quiet movements react upon the inward tumult.  In a little while she had conquered; she quietly entered the tent, drew a low chair to the entrance, and took up a book, just as footsteps became audible.  A moment afterward Broomhurst emerged from the darkness into the circle of light outside, and Mrs. Drayton raised her eyes from the pages she was turning to greet him with a smile.

“Are your things all right?”

“Oh, yes, more or less, thank you.  I was a little concerned about a case of books, but it isn’t much damaged fortunately.  Perhaps I’ve some you would care to look at?”

“The books will be a godsend,” she returned, with a sudden brightening of the eyes; “I was getting desperate—­for books.”

“What are you reading now?” he asked, glancing at the volume that lay in her lap.

“It’s a Browning.  I carry it about a good deal.  I think I like to have it with me, but I don’t seem to read it much.”

“Are you waiting for a suitable optimistic moment?” Broomhurst inquired, smiling.

“Yes, now that you mention it, I think that must be why I am waiting,” she replied, slowly.

“And it doesn’t come—­even in the Garden of Eden?  Surely the serpent, pessimism, hasn’t been insolent enough to draw you into conversation with him?” he said, lightly.

“There has been no one to converse with at all—­when John is away, I mean.  I think I should have liked a little chat with the serpent immensely by way of a change,” she replied, in the same tone.

“Ah, yes,” Broomhurst said, with sudden seriousness; “it must be unbearably dull for you alone here, with Drayton away all day.”

Mrs. Drayton’s hand shook a little as she fluttered a page of her open book.

“I should think it quite natural you would be irritated beyond endurance to hear that all’s right with the world, for instance, when you were sighing for the long day to pass,” he continued.

“I don’t mind the day so much; it’s the evenings.”  She abruptly checked the swift words, and flushed painfully.  “I mean—­I’ve grown stupidly nervous, I think—­even when John is here.  Oh, you have no idea of the awful silence of this place at night,” she added, rising hurriedly from her low seat, and moving closer to the doorway.  “It is so close, isn’t it?” she said, almost apologetically.  There was silence for quite a minute.

Broomhurst’s quick eyes noted the silent momentary clinching of the hands that hung at her side, as she stood leaning against the support at the entrance.