han three months ago.

And Lenox lay looking straight before him, stroking her hair soothingly
from time to time.

"Desmond is a strong man, a very strong man," he said, as if speaking to
himself. "But there's a flaw in his armour just above the heart; and I
believe that if any real harm comes to that wife of his, he'll go to
pieces, like a wheel with the centre knocked out."

CHAPTER XXII.

"What Love may do, that dares Love attempt."
--Shakspere.

It was evening at last: a sullen, breathless evening, heavy with
threatening cloud.

Since morning Honor Desmond had been fighting for life, against
appalling odds; while the man, whose love for her almost amounted to a
religion, did all that human skill could devise, which was pitifully
little after all, to ease the torturing thirst and pain, to uphold the
vitality that ebbed visibly with the ebbing day. But the very vigour
of her constitution went against her; for cholera takes strong bold
upon the strong. And Desmond never left her for an instant. He seemed
to have passed beyond the zone of hunger, thirst, or weariness, to have
reached that exalted pitch of suffering where the soul transcends the
body's imperious demands, asserts itself, momentarily, for the absolute
unconquerable thing it is.

Frank Olliver, in defiance of a July sun, flitted restlessly in and out
of the bungalow; and since Desmond would admit no one but the doctor to
his wife's room, she found some measure of comfort in futile attempts
to lighten Paul Wyndham's anxiety, and distract his thoughts; while the
newly joined husband and wife, so strangely isolated in their moment of
reunion, waited and hoped through the interminable hours, and snatched
fugitive gleams of contentment from the fact that now, at least, they
could suffer together.

James Mackay, the regimental doctor, a crustacean type of Scot, came
and went as frequently as his manifold duties would permit. On each
occasion he was waylaid in the dining-room by Paul Wyndham, his face
haggard with suffering; and on each occasion the little man's decisive
headshake struck a fresh blow at the hope that took 'such an
unconscionable time a-dying.' Finally he spoke his conviction
outright. It was late afternoon, and Honor's strength and courage,
though still flickering fitfully, were almost spent.

"I'm doubting if we can do much more for her now," he said, when the
door of her room had been quietly closed behind hi