"I'll be along, tell her--" "Had she better go alone ?" suggested Heywood.
"No; right you are." The other swept a fretful eye about the company.
"But this business begins to look urgent .-- Here, somebody we can spare.
You go, Hackh, there's a good chap." Chantel dropped the helmet he had caught up.

Bowing stiffly, Rudolph marched across the room and down the stairs.

His face, pale at the late spectacle, had grown red and sulky, "Can spare me, can you ?--I'm the one." He descended, muttering.
Viewing himself thus, morosely, as rejected of men, he reached the compound gate to fare no better with the woman.

She stood waiting in the shadow of the wall; and as he drew unwillingly near, the sight of her--to his shame and quick dismay--made his heart leap in welcome.

She wore the coolest and severest white, but at her throat the same small furbelow, every line of which he had known aboard ship, in the days of his first exile and of his recent youth.