Page:Frank Owen - The Actress.djvu/16

4 This Olga ignored.

"And how is Arthur?" she repeated softly.

"Coningsby is dying," said he simply. "The doctor says he cannot live a month. It seems as though it can't be true, a man of iron stricken down with typhoid as though he were no stronger than a child. When he is gone I know not what I shall do. The world will say, 'Coningsby, the explorer, is dead,' and then all will go on again as ever. But to me it will be, 'Coningsby, the friend, the comrade, who is gone.' And you must have lived in the tropics to know what that means. Why, I have seen him plunge into surging rapids to save the life of a little coal-black African child, possibly the son of a cannibal, and fight against the terrible fury of the waters until he, in turn, had been rescued by the natives. I have been lost for weeks alone with him in the awful forest, almost dead from hunger and afire from thirst. Once, down in Uganda, we lay in the blinding, scorching heat and dust, our tongues parched and blackened, half delirious with thirst. A few yards away stood a bottle containing a few precious drops of water. Although suffering frightfully, Coningsby would not even moisten his lips. It meant life for one of us, but it wasn't enough for two."

Jerold Wharton paused for a moment, as though he could see again the picture which he described blazing out before his eyes.

Olga placed her hand softly upon his arm. "Tell me," she said, and her voice shook, "did you drink the water?"