She took his arm, and spoke gravely again.
“You’re ill, my dear.”
“It’s nothing,” he said. “A chill!”
It was more than a chill. It was typhus. That night they put him to bed, fever-stricken. The vermin of the Volga had done their work. Janet Welford sat with him in a room that Christy had hired, and several times he spoke her name, without knowing she was near. Once he spoke another name which she had never heard before. “Nadia”—it sounded like that. But in his delirium he talked incessantly of Joyce. The image of the girl who had been his wife came back to him. They were married again. All else was blotted out.
“Joyce, darling! How beautiful you are! The ideal beauty! That was old Christy’s phrase. Joyce! . . . Joyce. . . . Is breakfast ready? What a kid you are! Why, Joyce, sweetheart, aren’t you ready yet? I’ve been waiting for you. I’m always lonely without you. Even for a second. Joyce . . . Joyce . . . Joyce. . . .”
Janet Welford bent over him.
He looked so young in his fever, with flushed cheeks and tousled hair. A boy again.
“Loyalty,” he said. “I’m nothing without loyalty, Joyce. It’s all yours.” He seemed to be arguing with her, trying to make her understand.
“The middle of the road. That’s where I am. Between the extremes, Joyce. A damned lonely place.”
A German doctor came with Christy.