It was now as though that youth came flooding back to greet her.
"Good-morning." He forgot everything, except that for a few priceless moments they would be walking side by side.
She faced him with a start, never so young and beautiful as now--her blue eyes wide, scornful, and blazing, her cheeks red and lips trembling, like a child ready to cry.
"I did not want _you_" she said curtly.
"Nor did they." Pride forged the retort for him, at a blow.

He explained in the barest of terms, while she eyed him steadily, with every sign of rising temper.
"I can spare you, too," she whipped out; then turned to walk away, holding her helmet erect, in the poise of a young goddess, pert but warlike.
This double injustice left Rudolph chafing.

In two strides, however, he had overtaken her.
"I am under orders," he stated grimly.
Her pace gradually slackened in the growing heat; but she went forward with her eyes fixed on the littered, sunken flags of their path.

This rankling silence seemed to him more unaccountable and deadly than all former mischances, and left him far more alone.

From the sultry tops of bamboos, drooping like plants in an oven, an amorous multitude of cicadas maintained the buzzing torment of steel on emery wheels, as though the universal heat had chafed and fretted itself into a dry, feverish utterance.