Over Cheniston's face flitted the ghost of a smile; and his voice, when he replied, gave Anstice a fresh shock, so thready and devoid of all tone was it.
"Thanks--very much--Anstice." He spoke slowly, with spaces between the words. "I'm very ill--I know--I think I'm going--to peg out--but I can't bear--to think--of Iris."
He stopped, quite exhausted by the effort of speech; and Anstice, more moved than he cared to show, laid the thin hand back on the bed, and took his patient's temperature, his heart sinking still lower as he read the thermometer's unimpeachable testimony.
Strive as he might, he could not rid himself of a fear that Bruce Cheniston's earthly race was ran; and catching sight of Iris' face as she stood on the opposite side of the bed, he felt, with a quick certainty, that she too realized that only by a miracle could her husband be restored to the health and vigour to which his young manhood surely entitled him.
"Come, Cheniston," he said presently, in answer to Bruce's last words, "you mustn't talk of pegging out. You have been bad, I can see that, but you know dozens of travellers in Egypt enjoy a taste of enteric and come through it as good as new. You got this through drinking polluted water, I understand?"
"Yes." Bruce smiled, haggardly, once more. "Too bad, wasn't it, that after playing with water ever since I came out here it should turn on me in the end. Serves me right--for--trusting an Arab--I suppose."
His voice died weakly away; and Anstice gently bade him keep quiet for a while.
"No use talking and exciting yourself," he said, for he could see the other's stock of strength was lamentably small. "Lie still and allow me to talk over affairs with Mrs. Cheniston--we will put our heads together and evolve some plan for your benefit." He hardly knew what he said, so filled was his heart with a pity in which now there was no faintest tinge of resentment for the unfair bargain which this man had once driven with him.
With a sigh Cheniston closed his eyes, and appeared to relapse once more into a kind of stupor; and when, in obedience to a silent gesture, Iris withdrew to the window, Anstice joined her there immediately.
Such remedies as yet remained to be tried Anstice determined to employ; but though he told himself fiercely that if mortal man could save Bruce Cheniston from the grave he should assuredly be saved, he experienced that hopeless feeling which all who gaze in the very face of death know only too well; and he did not dare to meet Iris' eyes as he conversed with her in a carefully-lowered tone.