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‘How do you do?’ she said, smiling upon him with a smile consciously kept unconscious. ‘Do you remember me? We’ve never spoken, I think, though we have met.—These are your woods, aren’t they? I must be trespassing.’

He did not reply for a moment, standing still in the narrow path and resting his curious gaze upon her; hard, empty, yet assessing. And if she were starved for people and events, what was he? So she asked herself, to escape the feeling of discomfort and uncertainty the pause evoked. They had never spoken; and to speak like this, with the light dismissal of all that had, indubitably, passed between them, had in it, she knew, something of a definite rebuff. But a rebuff was necessary in dealing with a man like Captain Ingpen. One must either rebuff him, or seem to accept what he might mean. So she spoke lightly, while thinking of his loneliness and of how inadequate for his needs would be the delicate viands her hunger craved. Distant memories crossed her mind; strange, perilous names; of tribes and mountains: Hindu Kush: the Durénis; the Ghilzáis; adventure, danger glimmered behind them. Meat; freshly killed meat, was what those tiger eyes were asking. Why was he here in these dank English woods? So she kept her discomfort at