"Do you? I think I should like the sort of husband who is strong enough to cradle that sort of a child.... Could your mother and Naïda receive me? Could I see your father?"
"Yes. When are you going back to Roya-Neh?"
"To-night."
He said quietly: "Is it safe?"
"For me to go? Yes—yes, my darling"—her hands tightened over his—"yes, it is safe—because you made it so. If you knew—if you knew what is in my heart to—to give you!—what I will be to you some day, dearest of men——"
He said unsteadily: "Come upstairs.... My father is very feeble, but quite cheerful. Do you understand that—that his mind—his memory, rather, is a little impaired?"
She lifted his hands and laid her soft lips against them:
"Will you take me to him, Duane?"
Colonel Mallett lay in the pale November sunlight, very still, his hands folded on his breast. And at first she did not know him in this ghost of the tall, well-built, gray-haired man with ruddy colour and firm, clear skin.
As she bent over, he opened his eyes, smiled, pronounced her name, still smiling and keeping his sunken eyes on her. They were filmy and bluish, like the eyes of the very old; and the hand she lifted and held was the stricken hand of age—inert, lifeless, without weight.