"Betty Derwent," said Herne very quietly.
Dead silence fell in the darkened tent—the silence of the desert, subtle, intense, in a fashion terrible. It lasted for a long time; so long a time that Herne suffered himself at last to relax, feeling the strain to be more than he could bear. He leaned among his pillows, and waited. Yet still, persistently, he grasped that cold, sinuous hand, though the very touch of it repelled him, as the touch of a reptile provokes instinctive loathing. It lay quite passive in his own, a thing inanimate, yet horribly possessed of life.
Slowly at last through the darkness a voice came:
"Monty!"
It was hardly more than a whisper; yet on the instant, as if by magic, all Herne's repulsion, his involuntary, irrepressible shrinking, was gone. He was back once more on the other side of the gulf, and the hand he held was the hand of a friend.
"My dear old chap!" he said very gently.
Vaguely he discerned the figure by his side. It sat huddled, mummy-like but it held no horrors for him any longer. They were not face to face in that moment—they were soul to soul.
"I say—Monty," stumblingly came the words, "you know—I never dreamed of this. I thought she would have married—long ago. And she has been waiting—all these years?"
"All these years," Herne said.
"Do you think she has suffered?" There was a certain sharpness in the question, as if it were hard to utter.