Yet externals in the main were so trifling. Carlin didn't eat; people seemed to take that as significant. Malcolm M'Cord came. Margaret Annesley came. Horace Dickson's father came. Skag went to the bazaars and back again. He went to the monkey glen. It was all a blur. Once he caught himself walking on the great Highway-of-all-India; and once deep in the jungle. He passed the civil surgeon of Hurda on his own verandah; and someone said that the old "family doctor" was to come from Poona. . . . Now he was in Carlin's room and Carlin was looking at him. He saw her face the moment he entered the room, and the fact that he had come in from the fierce daylight into the shadows did, not seem to blur his eyes, even for a second.
Her people in the room—Bhanah, the ayah, the civil surgeon, Ian Deal and someone else—but the line from her eyes to Skag was not crossed. The heart of the man leaped from what he saw—the transcendent understanding which needed no words; the look of all looks that meant herself—a little lingering smile on the lips, the endless lure of her wise eyes.
But all that was whipped away as he came three steps nearer her couch. The wonder of it was not taken, but the old pain returned; rather, the pain had been there all the time, but he had forgotten for a space. He saw the ashen and frail face again and the inexpressible weariness of her eyes, too tired to tell of it, too tired to stay! Then the face of the English officer appeared for his eyes—hovering back of the people, in a background of mountains. . . .
Carlin seemed listening. What she heard came out of a grey intolerable monotony; but still her eyes held his. They seemed concentrated upon some weakness of his nature—some dementia that had been before her for years, that had confronted her in every highway of life, frightened away every opportunity and spoiled every day. Her hand lifted just slightly, the palm turned toward him:
"Oh, won't you please stop those fever birds?"
. . . Then one day Skag, standing in the darkened library, heard Margaret Annesley and one of her friends speaking together in the verandah.
"But does she really hear anything?" the friend asked.
"Oh, yes; though you never hear them unless you are ill with the fever."
"How strange and terrible, and is it a particular fever?"
"Jungle fever, dear. It comes to us sometimes of itself, but more often after a shock. . . . Carlin's night in the dark—"