"You!" he whispered. "Safe! I've had horrible dreams."
"Only dreams," she soothed him.
"How pale you are!" He stared at her, still half dazed.
"Perhaps it's the light."
"No, it's not the light. I remember now.... What happened after he—I——"
"I'll tell you when you're stronger."
"I'm strong enough for anything. Only a little odd in my head."
"And your poor wounded hand? I bathed it and bandaged it again, and you never knew."
"Queer! I thought if I were dead I should have known if you touched me!" He spoke more to himself than to Sanda, and she did not answer. His eyelids drooped, and presently he slept again. Hours later, when he woke, she was still there. It seemed to the girl that the world had fallen to pieces, leaving only her and this man in the ruins. All around them lay the vast desert. To go back whence they had come was impossible. To go on seemed equally impossible. There was nowhere to go. But they were together. She knew that nothing could part them now, not life, and even less death, yet she could see no future. Everything had come to a standstill, and their souls might as well be out of their bodies. It would be so much simpler!
She gave Max tea that she had made; and when she had looked at his hand and bandaged it again, she told him all that had happened. How the Senegalese, whose brother Stanton had shot for pilfering, a month ago, had stabbed Stanton in the breast, and fifty others in blood-madness had rushed to finish his work. How Ahmara had run shrieking to the village, and the men, still in madness, had stolen the camels and gone off into the desert; not the murderers only, but their friends who saw that it was well to disappear, that it might never be known who were the men that saw Richard Stanton die.