he held a cup to his mouth and he obediently strove to swallow the
contents. It was champagne. After the first spasm of terror, and when
the application of water to his face failed to restore consciousness,
Iris had knocked the head off the bottle of champagne.

He quickly revived. Nature had only given him a warning that he was
overdrawing his resources. He was deeply humiliated. He did not
conceive the truth, that only a strong man could do all that he had
done and live. For thirty-six hours he had not slept. During part of
the time he fought with wilder beasts than they knew at Ephesus. The
long exposure to the sun, the mental strain of his foreboding that the
charming girl whose life depended upon him might be exposed to even
worse dangers than any yet encountered, the physical labor he had
undergone, the irksome restraint he strove to place upon his conduct
and utterances--all these things culminated in utter relaxation when
the water touched his heated skin.

But he was really very much annoyed. A powerful man always is annoyed
when forced to yield. The revelation of a limit to human endurance
infuriates him. A woman invariably thinks that the man should be
scolded, by way of tonic.

"How _could_ you frighten me so?" demanded Iris, hysterically.
"You must have felt that you were working too hard. You made me rest.
Why didn't you rest yourself?"

He looked at her wistfully. This collapse must not happen again, for
her sake. These two said more with eyes than lips. She withdrew her
arm; her face and neck crimsoned.

"There," she said with compelled cheerfulness. "You are all right now.
Finish the wine."

He emptied the tin. It gave him new life. "I always thought," he
answered gravely, "that champagne was worth its weight in gold under
certain conditions. These are the conditions."

Iris reflected, with elastic rebound from despair to relief, that men
in the lower ranks of life do not usually form theories on the
expensive virtues of the wine of France. But her mind was suddenly
occupied by a fresh disaster.

"Good gracious!" she cried. "The ham is ruined."

It was burnt black. She prepared a fresh supply. When it was ready,
Jenks was himself again. They ate in silence, and shared the remains of
the bottle. The man idly wondered what was the _plat du jour_ at
the Savoy that evening. He remembered that the last time he was there
he had called for _Jambon de York aux epinards_ and half a pint of
Heidseck.