Again he was searching the face at his side with grave intensity. It did not seem to him that this man could ever have been of the sort that his friend Rotherby would have cared to admit to terms of intimacy. Rotherby—notwithstanding his sins—had been fastidious in many ways.
The answer seemed to make the matter more comprehensible.
"I was with him when he died," the man said. "It was in just such an inferno as this. We were alone together, looking for gold in the Australian desert. We didn't find it, though it was there, mountains of it. The water gave out. We tossed for the last drain—and I won. That was how Rotherby came to die. He hadn't much to live for, and he was going to die, anyhow. A queer chap, he was. He and his wife never lived together after the smash came, and he had to leave the country. Perhaps you knew?"
"Yes," the doctor said again, "I knew."
Ford moved his head restlessly.
"The thought of her used to worry him in the night," he said. "I've known him lie for hours not sleeping, just staring up at the stars, and thinking, thinking. I've sometimes thought that the worst torture on earth can't equal that. You know, after he was dead, they found her miniature on him—a thing in a gold case, with their names engraved inside. He used to wear it round his neck like a charm. It was by that they identified him—that and his signet-ring, and one or two letters. Scamp though I was, I had the grace not to rob the dead. They sent the things to his wife. I've often wondered what she did with them."
"I can tell you that," said the doctor quietly. "She keeps them among her greatest treasures."
Ford turned sharply on his pillows, and stifled an exclamation of pain.
"You know her still, then?" he said.
"She is my wife," the doctor answered.