They passed anxious days awaiting the return of the fever, but the second attack did not appear for a week, and though it was not so violent as the previous one, Nell felt much weaker after it. She had become so thin and had lost so much weight that she did not look like a girl, but rather like the ghost of a girl. The little flame of her life flickered so feebly that it seemed as if a breath would blow it out. Stasch realized that death would not have to wait for a third attack to carry her off, and he expected her death from day to day, even from hour to hour.
He, too, had become quite thin and dark, for these misfortunes were more than his bodily and mental strength could stand. Each day as he looked into Nell’s face he often said to himself, “My reward for having cherished her as the apple of my eye will be the privilege of burying her in the jungle!” Why it should have come to this he could not imagine. At times he reproached himself for not having taken sufficient care of her, and for not having treated her as kindly as he should, and then he felt such a pain in his heart that he could have bitten his fingers for grief. This misfortune was overwhelming.
Nell now slept almost continually, which perhaps saved her life. But Stasch awakened her several times during the day to give her some strengthening food. Whenever it was not raining she would beg him to carry her out into the open air, for she was unable to stand. It often happened that she went to sleep even as he carried her in his arms. She knew that she was very ill, and that she might die at any time. At first, when she was a little better and felt inclined, she would talk about it to Stasch, all the time crying, for she was afraid of death.
“I shall never return to papa,” she once said. “But you must tell him that the thought of it made me very sorry, and ask him to come here to me.”
“You will return,” answered Stasch.
But he was unable to say any more, for he wanted to cry.
And Nell continued in a scarcely audible and sleepy voice:
“And papa will come here, and you will come back here again, too, won’t you?” At this thought a smile lit up her tiny, wan face, and then she whispered still more softly:
“But I am so sorry——”
At the same time she leaned her little head on his shoulder and began to cry, but he, conquering his own emotion, pressed her to his heart, and answered quickly: