'One round,' he said, 'heart shot.'
When at last dinner came he could not eat it. As soon as the others had done, he withdrew to his shelter. Though she guessed he was ill, Norah did not dare to follow, and after enduring Dick's sullen monologue retired early to the tent Archie had allotted her. Body triumphed over mind, and she slept as soon as she had stretched herself on her bed.
In the early hours of the morning she woke. She was conscious at once, before thought returned, of the oppression of impending disaster that had been her waking burden. Then she remembered.
Refreshed by sleep, her brain took up its round, searching for the path that led to safety. She saw at last why that search had been futile. Till now she had not dared face the future, to imagine what lay behind the curtain. A flash of insight revealed that she must pledge her future if she was to cope with the present.... For a time she fought off the question that clawed at her brain. At last she confronted it—'Must I give up Dick?' she asked herself.
With reluctant clearness she saw that, if she gave up her lover and told her husband, she would sterilise the soil so fertile with violence. But could she pay the price of sacrifice and humiliation? Could she let Dick go? Though all passion was buried under ashes, Dick was still a part of her subconscious life. She could not at once uproot the vivid memories of their few weeks together. Her emotions were in a state of suspended animation, shut off, not dead. What needs might not arise in that future she shrank from visualising!
Moreover, Dick loved her. Must he pay the price as well? Must she go on racking the men who loved her and inflict on Dick the anguish Archie seemed to suffer?
When she was sinking into a morass of conflicting emotion, pride came to her help. Whatever else she felt for Dick, she knew that she despised him. Contempt makes an ill bedfellow. A woman can love a weak man whom she pities; she is too practical to trust her life to a man she despises.
Almost against her will, Norah's mood hardened. The tent stifled her. She must make this cruel decision in the open air. Slipping into a cloak, she stepped into the moonlight.
The natives, less black than their shadows, slept in contorted postures about the ground. Here was an arm flung out, as if a declamatory gesture had beep stilled in sleep; there was a knee drawn up as if pain had found cessation in death. The ruined tower threw its shadow across the sleepers, a shadow which seemed to Norah the visible presentation of the doom she had divined.
In the distance a hyæna howled like a ship's syren and reminded her that it was not safe to move beyond the arc of light flung by the fire. As she took the chair Dick had left, she was startled by a voice she did not recognise. She could distinguish no words. Quietly she picked her way between the sleeping bodies to the shelter where Archie lay. The moonlight fell in flecks between the leaves, and she could see Archie sprawling on his back, nearly naked, his lips muttering in fever. As she picked up the clothes her arm brushed against him. He caught at it with hot, dry hands. A string of curses poured from his unconscious lips as he gripped her wrist with his two hands, digging his thumbs into her flesh. The pressure was so painful she felt she must wake him, but with a final twist under which her skin tore, he let go.