“But I say you must,” said the doctor, with quiet determination. “You’re looking almost as bad as she is; worse, in some ways. Let me look at that arm of yours. H’m! Varley’s almost as good a surgeon as he is a shot.”
Trafford took his arm away impatiently.
The doctor forced him into a chair, and motioned to the food which the women had prepared.
“Eat, and try and look a little more cheerful,” he said. “If she should wake and see that face of yours as it looks now, she’d think it was a ghost, and get scared.”
Trafford forced himself to eat and drink, then went back to the bedside.
Later on the cart arrived, then all was silent again. The day passed, the shades of evening began to fall upon the valley below as he sat and watched the white, lovely face.
The doctor was outside with the two women arranging the stores which Taffy had brought. Trafford was alone with his girl-wife.
Suddenly he saw a faint color rise and spread over the white face, her lips moved and quivered, and one hand, the one nearest him, stirred like a wounded bird.
Trafford’s heart leaped, and he was about to rise from his knees and fetch the doctor, but before he could do so, he heard her speak, and her voice, so low as to be almost inaudible, chained him to the spot.
“Trafford!” she breathed.