“You are good to me,” she half whispered, and smoothed his cheek, then slipped down on the outspread coat, and murmured, “Come; sit here by me, and we’ll both get warm.”

All night the rain dribbled, but no one came to drive them away from the fire, and they dozed side by side, their hands close and their garments steaming.  Istra fell asleep, and her head drooped on his shoulder.  He straightened to bear its weight, though his back twinged with stiffness, and there he sat unmoving, through an hour of pain and happiness and confused meditation, studying the curious background—­the dark roof of broken thatch, the age-corroded walls, the littered earthen floor.  His hand pressed lightly the clammy smoothness of the wet khaki of her shoulder; his wet sleeve stuck to his arm, and he wanted to pull it free.  His eyes stung.  But he sat tight, while his mind ran round in circles, considering that he loved Istra, and that he would not be entirely sorry when he was no longer the slave to her moods; that this adventure was the strangest and most romantic, also the most idiotic and useless, in history.

Toward dawn she stirred, and, slipping stiffly from his position, he moved her so that her back, which was still wet, faced the fire.  He built up the fire again, and sat brooding beside her, dozing and starting awake, till morning.  Then his head bobbed, and he was dimly awake again, to find her sitting up straight, looking at him in amazement.

“It simply can’t be, that’s all....  Did you curl me up?  I’m nice and dry all over now.  It was very good of you.  You’ve been a most commendable person....  But I think we’ll take a train for the rest of our pilgrimage.  It hasn’t been entirely successful, I’m afraid.”

“Perhaps we’d better.”

For a moment he hated her, with her smooth politeness, after a night when she had been unbearable and human by turns.  He hated her bedraggled hair and tired face.  Then he could have wept, so deeply did he desire to pull her head down on his shoulder and smooth the wrinkles of weariness out of her dear face, the dearer because they had endured the weariness together.  But he said, “Well, let’s try to get some breakfast first, Istra.”

With their garments wrinkled from rain, half asleep and rather cross, they arrived at the esthetic but respectable colony of Aengusmere by the noon train.

CHAPTER XI

HE BUYS AN ORANGE TIE

The Aengusmere Caravanserai is so unyieldingly cheerful and artistic that it makes the ordinary person long for a dingy old-fashioned room in which he can play solitaire and chew gum without being rebuked with exasperating patience by the wall stencils and clever etchings and polished brasses.  It is adjectiferous.  The common room (which is uncommon for hotel parlor) is all in superlatives and chintzes.