fore. It had lingered in her memory, as stories
will, but it had been a detached episode, having no personal meaning for
her. But now.... "She did that just to stop you going out to lunch with
a man?" she said slowly.

"Yes, rotten thing to do, wasn't it?"

Jane Hubbard moved to the foot of the bed, and her forceful gaze,
shooting across the intervening counterpane, pinned Eustace to the
pillow. She was in the mood which had caused spines in Somaliland to
curl like withered leaves.

"Were you ever engaged to Billie Bennett?" she demanded.

Eustace Hignett licked dry lips. His face looked like a hunted melon.
The flannel bandage, draped around it by loving hands, hardly supported
his sagging jaw.

"Why--er--"

"_Were_ you?" cried Jane, stamping an imperious foot. There was that in
her eye before which warriors of the lower Congo had become as chewed
blotting-paper. Eustace Hignett shrivelled in the blaze. He was filled
with an unendurable sense of guilt.

"Well--er--yes," he mumbled weakly.

Jane Hubbard buried her face in her hands and burst into tears. She
might know what to do when alligators started exploring her tent, but
she was a woman.

This sudden solution of steely strength into liquid weakness had on
Eustace Hignett the stunning effects which the absence of the last stair
has on the returning reveller creeping up to bed in the dark. It was as
though his spiritual foot had come down hard on empty space and caused
him to bite his tongue. Jane Hubbard had always been to him a rock of
support. And now the rock had melted away and left him wallowing in a
deep pool.

He wallowed gratefully. It had only needed this to brace him to the
point of declaring his love. His awe of this girl had momentarily
vanished. He felt strong and dashing. He scrambled down the bed and
peered over the foot of it at her huddled form.

"Have some barley-water," he urged. "Try a little barley-water."

It was all he had to offer her except the medicine which, by the
doctor's instructions, he took three times a day in a quarter of a glass
of water.

"Go away!" sobbed Jane Hubbard.

The unreasonableness of this struck Eustace.

"But I can't. I'm in bed. Where could I go?"

"I hate you!"

"Oh, don't say that!"

"You're still in love with her!"

"Nonsense! I never was in love with her."

"Then why were you going to marry her?"

"Oh, I don't know. It seemed a good idea at the time."

"Oh! Oh! Oh!"

Eustace bent a