his heart beat! how his temples pulsed! Why, this was fever! Such
pains in the back and head!

Still his skin was dry,--dry as parchment,--burning. He rose up; and a
bursting weight of pain at the base of the skull made him reel like a
drunken man. He staggered to the little mirror nailed upon the wall,
and looked. How his eyes glowed;--and there was blood in his mouth!
He felt his pulse spasmodic, terribly rapid. Could it possibly--? ...
No: this must be some pernicious malarial fever! The Creole does not
easily fall a prey to the great tropical malady,--unless after a long
absence in other climates. True! he had been four years in the army!
But this was 1867 ... He hesitated a moment; then,--opening his
medicine chest, he measured out and swallowed thirty grains of quinine.

Then he lay down again. His head pained more and more;--it seemed as
if the cervical vertebrae were filled with fluid iron. And still his
skin remained dry as if tanned. Then the anguish grew so intense as to
force a groan with almost every aspiration ... Nausea,--and the
stinging bitterness of quinine rising in his throat;--dizziness, and a
brutal wrenching within his stomach. Everything began to look
pink;--the light was rose-colored. It darkened more,--kindled with
deepening tint. Something kept sparkling and spinning before his
sight, like a firework ... Then a burst of blood mixed with chemical
bitterness filled his mouth; the light became scarlet as claret ...
This--this was ... not malaria ...

VI.

... Carmen knew what it was; but the brave little woman was not afraid
of it. Many a time before she had met it face to face, in Havanese
summers; she knew how to wrestle with it; she had torn Feliu's life
away from its yellow clutch, after one of those long struggles that
strain even the strength of love. Now she feared mostly for Chita.
She had ordered the girl under no circumstances to approach the cabin.

Julien felt that blankets had been heaped upon him,--that some gentle
hand was bathing his scorching face with vinegar and water. Vaguely
also there came to him the idea that it was night. He saw the
shadow-shape of a woman moving against the red light upon the wall;--he
saw there was a lamp burning.

Then the delirium seized him: he moaned, sobbed, cried like a
child,--talked wildly at intervals in French, in English, in Spanish.

--"Mentira!--you could not be her mother ... Still, if you were--And
she must not