Trixie stood up in the dog-cart. George had put out his hand to help her down; his face looked haggard and drawn, his eyes were sunk deep in his head. As she alighted he steadied her trembling form, and glanced up at the young man sitting, dumb with surprise and alarm, in the trap.
"Thank you for bringing my wife home, Greaves," said Coventry, with laborious courtesy. "See you to-morrow, perhaps. Good-night."
"Good-night, sir," came a respectful and relieved response; and without looking back Guy Greaves drove rapidly out of the compound.
Husband and wife stood alone on the steps of their veranda. For a space neither of them uttered a word. Trixie's heart beat painfully; she waited for George to speak, almost choking with apprehension. Was he dreadfully angry? What was he going to say? Wild visions of futile explanations and excuses, followed by disgrace, despair, even perhaps divorce, crowded her mind and rendered her weak and helpless. She yearned to throw herself into his arms, to feel his lips on hers, to weep out her love and her contrition on his breast. He stood there beside her, handsome, tall, to her adorable. Had she lost him through her foolishness, her lack of will? She dared not speak; a little sob was all the sound she made. Then suddenly she became conscious that George was swaying slightly as he stood. He began to say something, still in that odd, unnatural voice, but now the words were without coherence.
"George, are you ill?" she asked in quick concern, a concern that ousted all other distress for the moment.
He put up his hand to his head which was burning and throbbing with fever, and tried to control his wandering senses. He wanted to speak and tell Trixie not to be frightened. He was vaguely aware that she feared his reproaches, his anger; on her arrival her face and her voice had betrayed it, and she had trembled, poor child, as he helped her out of the dog-cart. He wanted to ask her easily, gently, where she had been, what had happened, with natural intonation, to make her believe that whatever she told him, of course he should quite understand. Instead he knew he was saying something entirely different, and he found himself powerless to prevent it. Trixie looked dim, indistinct, and her voice sounded far away, at the other end of the compound.
She was asking, alarmed and bewildered: "What do you mean? Dearest, what is the matter?"
He groped for her hand as though he were blind. "I was trying to tell you," he said thickly, "that I--that I"--he made a desperate endeavour to hold to his purpose, but failed--"I wanted to tell you about the woman in the bazaar." Then he reeled; and his wife, exerting all her strength, half supported, half dragged him to a chair.
A fortnight went by, and at sunset one evening Trixie Coventry came out of the bungalow to stroll with lagging feet about the garden. She looked white and weary, yet relief was in her eyes for suspense was over, George was gaining strength. His illness had been sharp, a vicious form of fever contracted in the jungle and encouraged by the journey, as well as by all that had followed on the night of his return. For days and nights after his collapse in the veranda he had either raved and tossed, or lain exhausted and inert scarcely conscious of existence. Fortunately a good nurse had been available, and, as is usual in India, people had been immeasurably kind and helpful. Yet the strain had been severe for Trixie, the watching, the anxiety, the long hot nights, the dread until the doctor could, with truth, assure her that her husband would not die; and underneath it all lay the harrowing uncertainty of what George had been about to say to her when delirium had intervened. Nothing in his wanderings had given her the smallest clue. As frequently happens when sickness causes derangement, the subject nearest his mind had seemingly fled. He babbled of trifles, of things that had never occurred, and complained with fractious persistence that a tortoise-shell cat with no eyes would sit on his bed.