The whole thing seemed incredible; yet, as he crossed the road to enter the Smiths' compound, the footsteps of those other Hosts who had passed on to the hills also remained to dimple the dry yellow sand.
The Smiths' bungalow lay calm, peaceful; the drawing-room, as he entered it, struck him with the old, familiar sense of refinement, indexing the refinement of its mistress. Only one change caught his observant eyes. Vincent Dering's photograph was no longer on the mantle-piece, whence it had always looked out with a certain challenge in its very prominence. Where had it gone? What matter? There was no need for such defiance now, thought George Dillon, with that curious half-cynical, half-resentful smile he kept for one subject only. She might keep the photograph where she chose, now, and none would blame her.
So thinking, he set aside the curtain which hung at his patient's door, and as he did so, resentment, cynicism, vanished in quick sympathy.
"Ah! fever again, I see,--that's a bore," he said, going over swiftly to the bed where Eugene Smith's long length lay visibly shivering; for something,--the exposure, the excitement, the strain, perhaps, of that awful inaction behind the door against which Vincent Dering was making that heroic stand,--had knocked the big man over, a prey to an old enemy--malarial fever. "When did it come on?"
Muriel Smith, who sat on the bed, her hand in one of her husband's shaking, trembling ones, looked up. She was very pale, but very calm.
"Half an hour ago. It is a pity. We hoped it was broken, didn't we? But he will fret himself so, Doctor--" Her eyes, on Dr. Dillon's, were telling their tale, so that it scarcely needed the rambling, quivering voice to show that the fresh onset of fever had once more clouded the sick man's brain.
"How can a fellow help fretting," murmured Eugene, his teeth chattering, "when he waits like a coward behind a door, where his best friend--"
The woman beside him winced, but interrupted him bravely. "But I tell him, Doctor--and it's true, isn't it?--that it was hardest for him--and that--that Vincent would rather have had it so--because he had to leave no one, and Eugene had Gladys--and me."
Her voice seemed to bring comfort, and the glistening, feverish eyes closed.
"Go on with the mixture," said the doctor, vexedly conscious of a lump in his throat. "This will wear itself out in a day or two; and--you can't do more than you're doing."