not try to lift him
myself. If we do lift him we must keep his body tilted at the same
angle. I must not give him any hot drinks and not too much cold drink.

And he is six foot high, so tall that his feet come through the blankets
at the bottom of the bed; and he keeps sinking down in it all the time
and wanting to raise himself up again. And his fever makes him restless.
And he is always thirsty and he longs for hot tea more than iced water,
and for more iced water than is good for him. The iced broth that is his
only nourishment he does not want at all.

And then he must be kept very quiet. I must not let him talk more than
is necessary to tell me what he wants, or he will die of exhaustion. And
what he wants is to talk every minute that he is awake.

He drops off to sleep, breathing in jerks and with a terrible rapidity.
And I think it will be all right as long as he sleeps. But his sleep
only lasts for a few minutes. I hear the rhythm of his breathing alter;
it slackens and goes slow; then it jerks again, and I know that he is
awake.

And then he begins. He says things that tear at your heart. He has looks
and gestures that break it--the adorable, wilful smile of a child that
knows that it is being watched when you find his hand groping too often
for the glass of iced water that stands beside his bed; a still more
adorable and utterly gentle submission when you take the glass from him;
when you tell him not to say anything more just yet but to go to sleep
again. You feel as if you were guilty of act after act of nameless and
abominable cruelty.

He sticks to it that he has seen me before, that he has heard of me,
that his people know me. And he wants to know what I do and where I live
and where it was that he saw me. Once, when I thought he had gone to
sleep, I heard him begin again: "Where did you say you lived?"

I tell him. And I tell him to go to sleep again.

He closes his eyes obediently and opens them the next instant.

"I say, may I come and call on you when we get back to England?"

You can only say: "Yes. Of course," and tell him to go to sleep.

His voice is so strong and clear that I could almost believe that he
will get back and that some day I shall look up and see him standing at
my garden gate.

Mercifully, when I tell him to go to sleep again, he does go to sleep.
And his voice is a little clearer and stronger every time he wakes.

And so the morning goes on. The only thing he wants yo