t. You deserve it. I should be a wretch--I shouldn't be natural if I
didn't love you! That's all I had to tell. I couldn't let you go without
knowing. And if you do go, I shall follow you soon, because I couldn't
live through a day more of my awful life without you."

"Now I _know_ that I can't die!" Max's voice rang out. "If there was
poison in my blood, it's killed with the joy of what you've said to me."

"Joy!" Sanda echoed. "There can be no joy for us in loving each other,
only sorrow."

"There's joy in love itself," said Max. "Just in knowing."

"Though we're never to speak of it again?"

"Even though we're never to speak of it again."

So they came to Sanda's tent; and Stanton, sitting in his open doorway,
saw them arrive together. With great strides he crossed the strip of
desert between the two tents, and thrust his red face close to the
blanched face of Max. His eyes spoke the ugly thing that was in his mind
before his lips could utter it. But Sanda gave him no time for words
that would be unforgivable.

"I had gone to the river," she said, with a hint of pride and command in
her voice that Max had never heard from her. It forbade doubt and rang
clear with courage. "Monsieur St. George was afraid for me, and came to
bring me back. On the way he killed a viper that would have bitten me,
and was bitten himself. He has cut out the flesh round the wound and
cauterized it; and he will live, please God, with care and rest."

Taken aback by the challenging air of one who usually shrank from him,
Stanton was silenced. Sanda's words and manner carried conviction; and
even before she spoke he had failed in goading himself to believe evil.
Drunk, he had for the moment lost all instincts of a gentleman; but,
though somehow the impulse to insult Sanda was beaten down, the wish to
punish her survived. Max's wound and the fever sure to follow, if he
lived, gave Stanton a chance for revenge on both together, which
appealed to the cruelty in him. Besides, it offered the brutal opening
he wanted to show his authority over the sullenly mutinous men.

"Sorry, but St. George will have to do the best he can without rest,"
Stanton announced harshly. "We start at four-thirty. It is to be a
surprise call."

"But we were to stop till to-morrow and refit!" Sanda protested in
horror.

"I've changed my mind. We don't need to refit. In five hours we shall be
on the march."

"No!" cried Sanda. "You want to kill my only friend,