"It's good of you to stay, St John," remarked Everest. "I am afraid it may be dull work for you now."
"Not a bit, not a bit," he returned. "I didn't like the idea of leaving you. I might come in useful with the nursing and watching, perhaps, as an extra hand. And I'll have a look in at those lions now we've got on to them."
That same night, when the ring of protecting fires had been lighted round the camp and all the lamps were lighted, the native servants brought round to Regina's tent the skin of the lioness. They had not yet finished the dressing and preparing of it, which would take fully a week, but they thought she would like to see it, and Everest let them come in and hold it up before her at the foot of her bed.
It was a magnificent skin; the lioness was a large one, and had been in splendid condition. A little colour came into Everest's face from pride at his pupil as he saw it, but Regina's own eyes filled with tears. The skin was so golden, so beautiful, with a sheen like satin on it, the breast part so snowy white where the cruel hole her rifle had made showed its rusty coloured edges.
"Oh, Everest, I feel so sorry for her! Poor mother, and what will the cubs do now? Will they die if she no longer is there to feed them?"
Everest laughed at this view of things.
"They may not keep so fat now she is no longer able to supply them with human beings for breakfast, but they will probably get on all right. They'll go and forage for themselves. The mother goes on hunting for them long after they can hunt quite well. Let them take away the skin, dearest, if it distresses you. I can't have you crying over anything." And he told the men to take it away, and give every attention to the curing of it and do it as perfectly as possible. For it was her gift to him and he knew she wanted him to keep and value it.
Day after day passed slowly by over the white tent in the desert, where such terrible, physical suffering struggled hour by hour to dominate the spirit of happiness—in vain. Regina lay in pain and was content, and Everest, torn with anxiety, harrowed by the sight of suffering he could not assuage, passing sleepless nights and long weary days at her bedside, was yet happy too. So strange a witch, so essentially a coquette is Happiness! Men spread nets for her feet and prepare chains to bind her airy wings, and just when they fancy she is securely bound to them they look round and she is gone! And those who with tear-blinded eyes have thought they had renounced her for ever, as they have said good-bye, dear Happiness, she has leapt to their heart and said she would never leave them. She will fly from the millionaire, suffocated in the pomp of his palace, to nestle so closely at the side of some one of Life's outcasts toiling in the dust of the road. She is bound by no laws, owes no allegiance, and those who do not court her she follows most. And here in the tent of fever and apprehension, of agony and tedium, she chose to take up her residence with these two. To Everest, in the violent reaction of mind and body, which had thrown him into the extreme of passion for this woman, it was a pleasure to deny himself, to wait upon her and suffer for her sake. He watched and waited on Regina with untiring devotion. At first, while there was great danger of fever, he never slept at all through the night, sitting by her wakeful and intent on watching the changes of her face, snatching for himself what little sleep he could in the day while the doctor took her in charge; and through all the hot long noontide hours he was there by her, reading to her when she could listen, watching her if she slept. And often the lions roared about the camp and his whole blood leapt up in a call upon him to go out into the old danger and excitement that he loved, but he checked and repressed himself and let them challenge him in vain. He knew if he left her now she would be anxious, nervous about him, and those feelings would bring on fever and retard her recovery. St John went out on several hunts, taking the guides and men with him, but neither Everest nor the doctor moved from the camp through all the burning weeks. They had their reward, for never did a patient progress more smoothly and evenly towards recovery than Regina. The iron fortitude of her nature, that enabled her to lie for hours without moving, resulted in her arm setting and joining perfectly. The absolute and silent resignation that she imposed upon herself kept the fever at bay.
One day when St John was out lion-hunting—fired by his success of yesterday, when he had brought back in triumph a young lion to the camp—and the doctor was asleep in his tent, Everest sat by Regina combing and brushing into order the long strands of her hair, that he had never once allowed to grow tangled or matted in neglect. In the dry, sunny air of the desert it had grown more golden and more crisp, and as he brushed it, it curled and sprang round his fingers in shining silky curls and meshes.