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Suddenly he seemed to recover himself, and looked up.

“You,” he said slowly, “you are Montagu Durant, the fellow she was engaged to before she married Rotherby.”

The doctor bent his head.

“Yes,” he said. “I am Montagu Durant.”

“Rotherby’s friend,” Ford went on. “The chap who stuck to him through thick and thin–to be betrayed in the end. I know all about you, you see, though you haven’t placed me yet.”

“No, I can’t place you,” Durant said. “I don’t think we ever knew each other very well. You will have to tell me who you are.”

“Later–later,” said Ford. “No, you never knew me very well. It was always you and Rotherby, you and Rotherby. You never looked at any one else, till that row at the ‘Varsity when he got kicked out. Yes,” with a sudden, sharp sigh, “I was a ‘Varsity man too. I admired Leonard Rotherby in those days. Poor old Leo! He knew how to hit a boundary as well as any fellow! You never forgave him, I suppose, for marrying your girl?”

There was a pause, and the fevered eyes sought Durant’s face. The answer came at length very slowly.

“I could have forgiven him,” Durant said, “if he had stuck to her and made her happy.”

“Ah! There came the rub. But did Rotherby ever stick to anything? It was a jolly good thing he died–for all concerned. Yet, you know, he cared for her to the last. Blackguard as he was, he carried her in his heart right up to his death. I tell you I was with him, and I know.”

There was strong insistence in the man’s words. Durant could feel the racing pulse leap and quiver under his hand. He leaned forward a little, looking closely into the drawn face.

“I think you have talked enough,” he said. “Try to get some rest.”

“I haven’t raved,” said Ford, with confidence. “It has done me good to talk. I can’t help thinking of Leo Rotherby. My brain runs on him. He wanted to see you–horribly–before he died. I believe he’d have asked your forgiveness. But you wouldn’t have given it to him, I suppose? You will never forgive him in your heart?”

Again the answer did not come at once. Durant was frowning a little–the frown of a man who tries to fathom his own secret impulses.

“I think,” he said at last, “that if I had seen him and he had asked for it, I should not have refused my forgiveness.”

“No one ever refused Rotherby anything,” said the dying man, with a curious, half-humorous twist of his mouth under its dark moustache.

“Except yourself,” Durant reminded him, almost involuntarily.

Again the wandering, uneasy eyes sought his. “You mean–that drain of water,” Ford said, with a total lack of shame or remorse. “Yes, it’s true Rotherby didn’t have that. But it didn’t make any difference, you know. He was going to die. And the living come before the dead, eh, doctor?”

Durant did not quite understand his tone, but he suffered the words to go unchallenged. He was not there to discuss the higher morality with a dying man. Moreover, he knew that the bare mention of water was a fiery torture to him, disguise it as he might.

He sat a little longer, then rose to go. He fancied that there was a shade less of restlessness about this man, whom he knew to be suffering what no other man in the tent could have endured in silence.

In response to a sign he stooped to catch a few, low-spoken words.

“By-and-bye,” said Private Ford, with husky self-assurance, “when it’s dark–or only moonlight–a man will creep out between the lines and crawl down to the river, to get some water for–the children.”

He was wandering again, Durant saw; and his pity mounted high.

“Perhaps, poor fellow; perhaps,” he answered gently.

As he went away he heard again the droning, unconscious voice:

“And power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched–with great heat. Eh, Sammy? Is that water you have there? Quick! Give me–what? There is none? Then why the–why the–” There came an abrupt pause; then a brief, dry chuckle that was like the crackling of flame through dead twigs. “Ah, I forgot. I mustn’t curse. I’ve got to set the example to these children. But, O God, the heat and the flies!”