Jocelyn moved away and busied herself noiselessly with one or two of
those small duties of the sick-room which women see and men ignore.
But she could not keep away. She came back and stood over him with
a silent sense of possession which made that moment one of the
happiest of her life. She remembered it in after years, and the
complex feelings of utter happiness and complete misery that filled
it.
At last a fluttering moth gave the excuse her heart longed for, and
her fingers rested for a moment, light as the moth itself, on his
hair. There was something in the touch which made him open his
eyes--uncomprehending at first, and then filled with a sudden life.
"Ah!" he said, "you--you at last!"
He took her hand in both of his. He was weakened by illness and a
great fatigue. Perhaps he was off his guard, or only half awake.
"I never should have got better if you had not come," he said.
Then, suddenly, he seemed to recall himself, and rose with an effort
from his recumbent position.
"I do not know," he said, with a return of his old half-humorous
manner, "whether to thank you first for your hospitality or to beg
your pardon for making such unscrupulous use of it."
She was looking at him closely as he stood before her, and all her
knowledge of human ills as explored on the West Coast of Africa, all
her experience, all her powers of observation, were on the alert.
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