The grayness
of the cave settled down upon him like a pall. Once he would have been
indifferent to it, resigned to the knowledge that it was inevitable.
But now he had come, if not to share her hope, at least to sympathize
with it, and to wish ardently for her sake that her faith might be
justified. And it seemed a pitiable thing that she should have been
deceived, an intolerable thing that she should die there so
uselessly,--for him.

He moved over to her, and placed his hand on her forehead. It was
burning hot.

"Water, please!" she gasped.

He hobbled to the entrance, and brought a cupful of snow, and melted
it over the fire. She drank the water greedily, and begged for more.
But he told her gently that she must wait a little while. Then he sat
thinking. What should be done with fever? It would probably be
pneumonia, or something as fatal. And it would take her as the north
wind takes the drooping petals of a rose.

He bent over her, and tried to soothe her with such futile words as
came. The look she gave him went straight into deep, dark cells of his
being that he thought had been closed and sealed forever. She begged
him to eat; he must cook his own breakfast. Oh, but he must eat, or he
should not be able to help her, she said. She would be quite well in a
day or two; she was sure of that; and he must not get sick too. After
he had been so patient and so good to her!

Haig turned away with a groan, and tried to obey her. But eat? Eat
that repulsive food that he had choked down these many days only to
please her, only to subscribe to her foolish faith? He could not! But
presently she raised her head, and saw that he was not eating, and
chided him. Whereupon he swallowed some morsels of the venison, and
assured her that he had eaten heartily.

All that day she lay there, her face flushed, her eyes gleaming with a
brightness that was more than the brightness of her indomitable
spirit. When she smiled up at him he turned his face away that she
might not see what he knew was written on it. And then he realized how
much that smile had come to mean to him--how all unawares he had come
to covet and to prize it--how he had half-consciously of late resorted
to unexpected words and gestures to coax it to her lips.

There was no sleep for either of them that night. The next day Marion
grew steadily worse, and toward evening she became delirious. And
there was no concealment in this delirium as there had been in his.