Page:A Good Woman (1927).pdf/432

 ghost that walked with him. And on the fourth night she was awakened by his voice saying, "Mary, I feel ill. I'm afraid I've caught the fever again." It was a voice peaceful and full of apology.

By noon the fever had taken possession of his thin body, and by evening he lay still and unconscious. For three days and three nights Mary sat beside him, while Swanson fumbled with his medicines, and kept saying in his kind, clumsy way, "He'll be all right now. You mustn't fret. Why, he's strong as an ox. I've seen him like this before." She sat by the bed, bathing Philip's thin face, touching his head gently with her hand. In her weariness she deceived herself, thinking at times, "He's cooler now. It will pass," but in the end she always knew the bitter truth—that the fever hadn't passed. It was always there, burning, burning, burning the little life that remained.

Sometimes in his delirium he talked of Lady Millicent and Swanson, but nearly always of Naomi. She was always there, as if she, too, stayed by the side of the crude bed. . . watching.

In the middle of the fourth night, when Swanson had come in to look at him, Philip stirred slowly, and opened his eyes. For a moment he looked about him with a bewildered look in the burning blue eyes, and then he reached out weakly, and took her hand. "Mary," he said, "my Mary . . . always mine since the beginning."

He asked her to get a pencil and a block of paper out of his box, and then he said, "I want you to write something for me. I'll tell you what it is. . . ." When she returned, he lay silent for a time, and then