quite the wrong
effect. Then I saw she was really losing her head over you---- Natural
enough. So I simply stood by. If she really wanted _you_--not me, that
was another affair. And it's plain ... she did."

"But when--did she _make_ it plain?" Roy insisted, feeling more and more
as if the ground were giving way under his feet.

"Just before the Gym. That ... was why...." He looked full at Roy now.
His eyes darkened with pain. "I felt like murdering you that day, Roy.
Afterwards ... well--one managed to carry on somehow. One always can--at
a pinch ... _you_ know."

"My God! It's the bitterest, ironical tangle!" Roy burst out with a
smothered vehemence that told its own tale. "You _ought_ to have
insisted about me, Lance. I wouldn't for fifty worlds...."

"Of course you wouldn't. Don't fret, old man. And don't blame _her_."

"Blame or no, I can't pretend it doesn't alter things ... spoil things,
badly...."

He broke off, startled by the change in Desmond. His face was drawn. He
was shivering violently.

"Lance--_what_ is it? Fever? Have you been feeling bad?"

Desmond set his lips to steady them. "On and off--at Mess. Touch of the
sun, perhaps. I'll get to bed and souse myself with quinine."

But he was so obviously ill that Roy paid no heed. "Well, I'm going to
send for Collins instanter."

"Don't make an ass of yourself, Roy," Lance flashed out: but his hands
were shaking: his lips were shaking. He was no longer in command of
affairs....

While the message sped on its way, Roy got him to bed somehow; eased
things a little with hot bottles and brandy; nameless terrors knocking
at his heart....

In less than no time Collins appeared, with the Colonel; and their faces
told Roy that his terror was only too well founded....

Within an hour he knew the worst--acute blood-poisoning from the _lathi_
wound.

"Any hope----?" he asked the genial doctor, while Paul Desmond knelt by
the bed speaking to his brother in low tones.

"Too early to give an opinion," was the cautious answer. But the caution
and the man's whole manner told Roy the incredible, unbearable truth.

Something inside him seemed to snap. In that moment of bewildered agony,
he felt like a murderer....

* * * * *

Looking back afterwards, Roy marvelled how he had lived through the
waking nightmare of those two days--while the doctor did all that was
humanly possible, and Lance pitted all the clean strength of hi