"We shall have to draw in our belts," he was saying, making mock, as strong men will, of his physical pain. "Only four dozen boxes of pea-meal and twenty bags of rice left." ...
"When men are slowly starved they can bear the hunger ... but thirst is an active devil."
Oh, God, the smell of the wine—his wine—to see them drink it, laughing, while his dear lips in vain were calling out for water!
* * * * *
She felt his anguish burn in her own throat, desiccate her own mouth. Some one was speaking to her; her dry tongue clicked and could form no sound. She groped for the glass of water and lifted it to her lips, but laid it down untouched in a spasm of horror. How could she drink when he was parched?
"Rosamond, Rosamond, when will you hold the cup for me?" She put her hand to her throat; the room went round with her.
"You are suffering," said Bethune, leaning over to her.
His nature was all unused to introspection. By character and breeding he was given to hold in scorn all troubles that were not concrete, all conflicts conducted in those nebulous regions known as the heart or the soul. His life had been mapped out on positive lines, where right and wrong were as white and black. But, since his first meeting with Lady Gerardine, his simple ethics no longer sufficed. Not only did others discover to him desires, motives, heights and depths undreamed of in his philosophy, but he had become aware of some such forces in his own being. Like a man who first suspects within himself the germs of mortal illness, he had tried to prove their non-existence by denial. But the pain-life is too strong for human will, and the time comes when the only fight the will can make against it is that of silent endurance.
As Bethune sat by his hostess to-night, he was feeling, inarticulately, according to his nature, but acutely, not only the pain of her own situation as he dimly guessed it, but the actual physical pain of her suffering, her sick recoil from meat and bread, almost the spasm in her beautiful throat that would not let her swallow one drop of the water her fevered lips yearned for.
He spoke at last. Her dumb anguish was more than he could bear.