“Wait!” he said bitterly; and he uttered a low groan, which made the nurse approach. “No, no,” he said, “I will be quite calm.” The nurse drew back.
“Tell me, Mark,” said Janet, with her pretty little earnest face puckered up. “Why did you not come straight to me? How stupid? Of course you didn’t know where, as you did not get my last letters?”
“No, I have had no letters for a year. How could I, out in that desert?”
“But, Mark, you recollect being pursued by those men!”
“Yes, yes.”
“You are sure it was not a dream?”
He looked at her almost fiercely.
“Dream? Could a man dream a thing like that?”
“Don’t be cross with me, dear Mark,” she said, laying her cheek against his. “It seems so strange, and you have been very, very ill. My own darling brother!”
It was not jealousy, but something very near akin, that troubled Rich as she stood there, with an intense longing to take her friend’s place, after the long parting. But there was the recollection that their parting had not been the warm passionate embracing of lovers, only calm and full of the hope of what might be.