Spurrier, too, bowed stiffly and left the room.
Though it was late when Captain Comyn entered his own quarters, he did not at once throw himself on the army cot that stood against the whitewashed wall.
For him the cot held no invitation—only the threat of insomnia and tossing. His taut nerves had lost the gracious art of relaxation, and before his thoughts paraded hideously grotesque memories of the few faces he had ever seen marred by the dethronement of reason.
Already he had forgotten the violent and discreditable 8 scene with Spurrier, and presently he dropped himself inertly into the camp chair beside the table at the room’s center and opened its drawer.
Slowly his hand came out clutching a service revolver, and his eyes smoldered unnaturally as they dwelt on it. But after a little he resolutely shook his head and thrust the thing aside.
He sat in a cold sweat, surrounded by the silence of the Eastern night, a comprehensive silence which weighed upon him and oppressed him.
In the thatching of the single-storied adobe building he heard the rustling of a house snake, and from without, where moonlight seemed to gush and spill against the cobalt shadows, shrilled the small voice from a lizard’s inflated, crimson throat.
It was all crazing him, and his nails bit into his palms as he sat there, silent and heavy-breathed. Then he heard footsteps nearer and louder than those of the pacing sentries, followed by a low rapping of knuckles on his own door. Perhaps it was Doctor James. He had the kindly habit of besetting men who looked fagged with the offer of some innocuous bromide. As if bromides could soothe a brain in which something had gone malo!
“Come in,” he growled, and into the room stepped not Major James, but Lieutenant Spurrier.
Slowly and with an infinite weight of weariness, Comyn rose to his feet. He might be afraid of lunacy, but not of lieutenants, and his lips smiled sneeringly.