, certainly. Yes, I'll tell your husband, but not today. Today
you will want to be taken care of, and we mustn't pile on the agony."

"On whom? It would be such a relief to me!"

"Not to your husband. I wouldn't mind betting he'd have a fit of the
blues and be ill himself as a result."

"Oh, no! Ray never gets ill. He is so strong. That is why he can't
understand us. Oh, Doctor, I cannot live in India!" she wailed.

"Are you very homesick?" he asked with the same grudging smile.

"I hate India! It will kill Baby--won't you explain that to my husband?"

"There is no reason why it should kill Baby."

"How can you tell?--everything is against him here!"

Dalton decided to humour her because of the deepening flush and starry
eyes. The nervous fingers twined about his were hot with fever. "That's
all right. Be happy, you'll go home in the spring if it depends on me."

"Oh, thank you, you are such a dear!"

Captain Dalton smiled less grudgingly. She was so perfectly ingenuous.
In his critical eyes was a look of dalliance with a new problem. They
were eyes that must often have studied human problems and not always to
good purpose.

"I suppose the kid is your first consideration?" he asked, amused.

"He's so helpless!"

"I see," he remarked oracularly. Before he left the tent he gave her a
tablet from a phial which he carried in his vest-pocket.

"Do you know," she ventured in the hurried accents of feverishness, "I
did not like you a bit when I first met you."

"And now?"

"You are so different from what I had imagined."

"What was that?"

"You seemed an animated iceberg--forbidding and--yes, almost
disagreeable. You make most people afraid of you."

"It matters very little to me what people think of me," he returned
indifferently.

"Don't you ever care for friends?"

"I have no use for friends--besides, who are one's friends? I have
ceased to believe in friendship," he sneered.

She studied his face gravely. "I don't like to hear you speak like that.
We would be your friends if you would let us."

Dalton checked a laugh of genuine amusement, the first sound of mirth
she had heard from his lips, and it was not pleasant hearing.

"You are very good," he said tolerantly, "but it wouldn't work. I
wouldn't suggest the experiment, if I may advise you."

"I certainly shall not, if you are nasty," she pouted.

Dalton laughed again disagreeably and went out.

He was truly a conundrum, she decided, and