A blue and flickering gleam of light, dim, yet persistent, seemed to enhalo a woman's face; and as Stern's weary eyes opened under languid lids, closed, then opened again, the wounded engineer smiled in his weakness.
"Beatrice!" he whispered, and tried to stretch a hand to her, as she sat beside his bed of seaweed covered with the coarse brown fabric. "Oh, Beatrice! Is this--is this another--hallucination?"
She took the hand and kissed it, then bent above him and kissed him again, this time fair upon the lips.
"No, boy," she answered. "No hallucination, but reality! You're all right now--and I'm all right! You've had a little fever and--and--well, don't ask any questions, that's all. Here, drink this now and go to sleep!"
She set a massive golden bowl to his mouth, and very gently raised his head.
Unquestioningly he drank, as though he had been a child and she his mother. The liquid, warm and somewhat sweet, had just a tang of some new taste that he had never known. Singularly vitalizing it seemed, soothing yet full of life. With a sigh of contentment, despite the numb ache in his right temple, he lay back and once more closed his eyes. Never had he felt such utter weakness. All his forces seemed drained and spent; even to breathe was very difficult.
Feebly he raised his hand to his head.
"Bandaged?" he whispered. "What does that mean?"
"It means you're to go to sleep now!" she commanded. "That's all--just go to sleep!"
He lay quiet a moment, but sleep would not come. A score, a hundred thoughts confusedly crowded his brain.
And once more looking up at her in the dim blue gloom of the hut where they were, he breathed a question: "Were you badly hurt, dear, in--in the battle?"
"No, Allan. Just stunned, that's all. Not even wounded. Be quiet now or I'll scold!"
He raised his arms to her and, weak though he was, took her to his breast and held her tight, tight.
"Thank God!" he whispered. "Oh, I love you! I love you so! If you'd been killed--"
She felt his tears hot upon his wasted cheeks, and unloosened his arms.
"There, there!" she soothed him. "You'll get into a fever again if you don't lie still and try not to think! You--"
"When was it? Yesterday?" he interrupted.
"Sh-h-h-h! No more questions now."
"But I want to know! And what happened to me? And the--the Lanskaarn? What about them? And--"
"Heavens, but you're inquisitive for a man that's just missed--I mean, that's been as sick as you have!" she exclaimed, taking his head in both hands and gazing down at him with eyes more deeply tender than he had ever seen them. "Now do be good, boy, and don't worry about all these things, but go to sleep--there's a dear. And when you wake up next time--"