Something in her eyes shamed the
man. Not for all his inflexible sternness could he feel that he had
come out a winner in this, their first encounter. A woman--one of the
despised, ignored creatures--had deceived him. She had disobeyed his
orders. She had flatly thrown down the gage of battle to him, that
she would never leave _Nissr_ alive. And last, she had forced him
into planning to disseminate falsehoods among his crew--falsehoods the
secret of which only she shared with him.
Unwilling as this man was to have anything in common with her, he
had been obliged to have something in common--to have much. Something
existed; a bond, even if an unpleasant one, had already stretched
itself between these two--the first secret this man ever had shared
with any woman.
"Captain Alden" smiled a little. The honors of war, so far, lay all in
her camp.
The Master, feeling this to the inner marrows, humiliated, shaken,
yet through it all not quite able to suppress a kind of grudging and
unwilling tribute of admiration, sought to conceal his perturbation
with a stern command:
"Now, madam, I will call my orderly and have you escorted to a
stateroom; have you provided with everything needful for your injury.
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