Fulvia, watching him with her kind troubled eyes, saw the physical pain and read little beyond, for she had not the clue.
"Poor Nigel!" she said compassionately, and the next thing that he knew was the feeling of something wet and cool and refreshing upon his hot brow.
Nigel could not protest or refuse. He could only give himself over into her capable care-taking hands; too ill for more speech, yet all the while dimly conscious of a certain sense of possession in the touch of those same hands. Was it consciousness or fancy? Nigel did not know. It might have been either. He was obviously in no condition for the careful weighing of evidence.
One thought only was clear—one little sentence from Ethel's paper—
"To sacrifice self, as an habitual law, in each sudden call to action."
It haunted him for hours, together with Ethel's face.
[CHAPTER XX]
AN UTTER TANGLE
"O life, O death, O world, O time,
O grave, where all things flow,
'Tis yours to make our lot sublime,
With your great weight of woe."—TRENCH.
DAYS passed, and nobody yet knew the state of family affairs.