"Yes, John."
He lay silent for several minutes. Then he asked hesitatingly: "And—when—do you—go back—West?"
"I have come to stay," she replied. Neither in her voice nor in her face was there a hint of what those five words meant to her.
He closed his eyes again. Presently a tear slid from under each lid and stood in the deep, wasted hollows of his eye-sockets.
XXVI.
A DESPERATE RALLY.
When he awoke again he felt that he should get well rapidly. He was weak, but it seemed the weakness of hunger rather than of illness. His head was clear, his nerves tranquil; his mind was as hungry for action as his body was for food.
"As soon as I've had something to eat," he said to himself, "I'll be better than for years. I needed this." And straightway he began to take hold of the outside world.
"Are you there, Pauline?" he asked, after perhaps half an hour during which his mind had swiftly swept the whole surface of his affairs.