Meanwhile Kate, on the inner roof, had paused beside the low string bed set in its middle, scarcely daring to look at its burden, and so put hope and fear to the touchstone of truth. But as she stood hesitating, a voice, querulous in its extreme weakness, said in Hindustani:
"It is too soon, Tara; I don't want anything; and--and you needn't wait--thank you."
He lay with his face turned from her, so she could stand, wondering how best to break her presence to him, noting with a failing heart the curious slackness, the lack of contour even on that hard string bed. He seemed lost, sunk in it; and she had seen that sign so often of late that she knew what it meant. One thing was certain, he must have food--stimulants if possible--before she startled him. So she stole back to the outer roof, expecting to find Tara there, and Tara's help. But the roof lay empty, and a sudden fear lest, after all, she had only come to see him die, while she was powerless to fight that death from sheer exhaustion, which seemed so perilously near, made her put down the bunch of flowers she held with an impatient gesture. What a fool she had been not to think of other things!
But as she glanced round, her eye fell on a familiar earthenware basin kept warm in a pan of water over the ashes. It was full of chikken-brât, and excellent of its kind, too. Then in a niche stood milk and eggs--a bottle of brandy, arrow-root---everything a nurse could wish for. And in another, evidently in case the brew should be condemned, was a fresh chicken ready for use. Strange sights these to bring tears of pity to a woman's eyes; but they did. For Kate, reading between the lines of poor Tara's confusion, began to understand the tragedy underlying those words she had just heard:
"I don't want anything, Tara. And you needn't wait, thank you." She seemed to see, with a flash, the long, long days which had passed, with that patient, polite negative coming to chill the half distraught devotion.
He must take something now, for all that. So, armed with a cup and spoon, she went back, going round the bed so that he could see her.
"It is time for your food, Mr. Greyman," she said quietly; "when you have taken some, I'll tell you everything. Only you must take this first." As she slipped her hand under him, pillow and all, to raise his head slightly, she could see the pained, puzzled expression narrow his eyes as he swallowed a spoonful. Then with a frown he turned his head from her impatiently.
"You must take three," she insisted; "you must, indeed, Mr. Greyman. Then I will tell you--everything."
His face came back to hers with the faintest shadow of his old mutinous sarcasm upon it, and he lay looking at her deliberately for a second or two. "I thought you were a ghost," he said feebly at last; "only they don't bully. Well let's get it over."
The memory of many such a bantering reply to her insistence in the past sent a lump to her throat and kept her silent. The little low stool on which she had been wont to sit beside him was in its old place, and half-mechanically she drew it closer, and, resting her elbow on the bed as she used to do, looked round her, feeling as if the last six weeks were a dream. Tara had told truth. Everything was in its place. There were flowers in a glass, a spotless fringed cloth on the brass platter. The pity held in these trivial signs brought a fresh pang to her heart for that other woman.