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 The hand he gave me was hot and dry, and it needed no medical knowledge to guess that his pulse was quick and throbbing.

He soon dismissed the attendants, and when we were alone he said:

"I never knew how much I had missed you, old Mark, until the moment when I caught sight of you just now."

I did not say anything then, but quietly watched him for a moment, then I put my hand on his shoulder and forced him to look at me.

"What is the matter, old man?" I said.

"Matter? Oh, fever, malaria, I suppose. I can't sleep, and seem as weak as a rat. Is there such a thing as nostalgia, do you think?—stupid, foolish home-sickness?—because if there is, I have got a touch of it, I think."

"There is every kind of mental ailment, I am sorry to say, Girlie, and they can all be described to a fellow who has your welfare at heart more than his own."

"Fever, Mark, I tell you," he said with a frown. "Take out your watch and feel my pulse. It is fever, is it not? Malarial, do you think? or has the fashionable influenza travelled with us across the desert? I want a dose of quinine, I think."

"You want a dose of confidence, Girlie," I replied drily. "Your pulse is quick, your temperature is high; I can soon remedy that, if …"

"If what?" he asked abruptly, for I had paused, hesitating, strangely enough, for the first time in my life not daring to touch upon a point openly with Hugh. "If you will tell me what you think of when you lie awake at night," I said at last, looking straight and searchingly in his eyes.

"Mostly of what a confounded fool your friend