"Then I did have the first shot at lion in this camp, as you said I ought to. How strange it all seems! I shot it out there to the east of the camp. I want you to have that skin. Will you send after it? Get it before it is spoiled, and always keep it. Everest, you know—I saved her—for you."
"I know, I know," he answered, and his voice told her the words were wrung out of his inmost soul. "But I only want you. It has all been a mistake, and I felt I could not explain. You are my very life, dearest, no one else is anything."
"Come, come, this won't do!" broke in upon them from the door. "No talking, no excitement, please."
The doctor had gone for his case of probes and dressings. He stood now with it in his hand and disapproval on his face. Everest moved a little from the bed.
"Leave me with the doctor for a moment," Regina said. "I want to ask him something," and Everest left the tent to give orders for the body of the lioness to be brought into camp.
As he came back from doing this, he came upon the doctor just leaving the tent and stopped.
"Will she live?" he asked, and the doctor thought in all his experience he had never seen so much suffering and anxiety on a person's face, combined with such perfect self-control and calm, and thought what a splendid pair they were.
"No one can say," he replied, "but I should think there is every chance of her doing so. I was just coming out to find you. This probing of the wounds is a most painful process, but it's extremely necessary; all our success depends on getting them clean. They are all choked up now with clotted blood and bits of linen driven in by the beast's claws. Your wife's just as brave as she can be, but she must suffer intensely. Your influence is so good over her, you'd better be present while I'm doing it: you soothe her, mesmerise her in some way, and that's better than an anæsthetic. I believe she'd let you mince her up alive and never complain. It's a nasty business for you seeing it done, but if you can stand it, it's better for her."
"Of course I will," rejoined Everest. "I was coming back now to her," and both men entered the tent together.
It was a hideous scene of four long hours of suffering that followed, but suffering illumined by those noblest qualities in humanity that shine out like lamps here and there and throw their light across the stained pages of humanity's black record as a whole.