tch by
Bridget's bedside.

All night he tended her, fighting the fever as he had fought the fire
at Breeza Downs, plying her with continued fomentations, dosing her
with quinine, laudanum and the various medicines he had found
efficacious. For never was a better doctor for malarial fever than
Colin McKeith--he had had so much experience of it. When towards
morning she fell into a profuse sweating, and he had to change and
wring out the blankets in which he had wrapped her, he knew that the
fever danger was past.

She awoke at mid-day from a deep, health-restoring sleep, so weak
however, that her bones felt like water and her face looked as white as
the pillow case. But her brain was clear.

She saw that there was no one else in the room, which was still in
great disorder. The blankets, hot and heavy, were almost unbearable,
but she had not strength to fling them off. It felt frightfully warm
for the time of year and the air that came in through the open French
window seemed to be blowing from an oven. The sky, as she glimpsed it
from her bed between the veranda eaves and the railings, looked
curiously dark and had a lurid tinge.

Lifting herself slightly, she became aware that Colin was in the
veranda with his back to her, looking out over the plain. The set of
his figure as he bent forward, with his hands on the railings and his
eyes apparently strained towards the horizon, reminded her of the
determined hunch of his square shoulders and the dogged droop of his
head when he had ridden away with Harris and the Organizer.

She called faintly, 'Colin.'

He turned round instantly and came to the bed. She stared up at him,
frightened at the look in his face.... Something dreadful must have
happened. She was too weak to go over coherently in her mind the
sequence of events and feelings. She only sensed a menacing spectre,
monstrous, terrifying. She could not realise her own share in the
catastrophe she felt was impending. She could not believe that Colin
could change so much in less than ten days. Everything had come about
with such incredible swiftness. His face looked haggard, ravaged. The
cheeks seemed to have fallen in. The features were rigid as if cut out
of metal. The whites of his eyes between the reddened lids were very
blood-shot and the eyes themselves seemed balls of blue fire. There was
not a shade of kindliness in them, only the gleam of a fixed purpose
which no entreaties would alter.

She could imag