Dam at the first possible moment—­like the Wild West ‘shoot on sight’ idea.  I’m going to seize him and marry him and take care of him for the rest of his life.  If he never had another grief, ache, or pain in the whole of his life, he must have had more than ten times his share already.  Anyhow whether he’ll marry me or whether he won’t—­in his stupid quixotic ideas of his ‘fitness’ to do so—­I’m never going to part from him again.”

And Auntie Yvette would endeavour to be less shocked than a right-minded spinster aunt should be at such wild un-Early-Victorian sentiments.

* * * * *

Come, this was a better sort of dream!  This was better than dreaming of prison-cells, lunatic asylums, tortures by the Snake, lying smashed on rocks, being eaten alive by vultures, wandering for aeons in red-hot waterless deserts, and other horrors.  However illusory and tantalizing, this was at least a glorious dream, a delirium to welcome, a wondrous change indeed—­to seem to be holding the hand of Lucille while she gazed into his eyes and, from time to time, pressed her lips to his forehead.  A good job most of the bandages were gone or she could hardly have done that, even in a dream.  And how wondrously real! Her hand felt quite solid, there were tears trickling down her cheeks, tears that sometimes dropped on to his own hand with an incredible effect of actuality.  It was even more vivid than his Sword-dream which was always so extraordinarily realistic and clear.  And there, yes, by Jove, was dear old Auntie Yvette, smiling and weeping simultaneously.  Such a dream was the next best thing to reality—­save that it brought home to one too vividly what one had lost.  Pain of that kind was nevertheless a magnificent change from the other ghastly nightmares, of the wholly maleficent kind.  This was a kindly, helpful pain....It is so rare to see the faces of our best-beloved in dreams ...  Sleep was going to be something other than a procession of hideous nightmares then ...

“I believe he knew me, Auntie,” whispered Lucille.  “Oh, when will Colonel Decies come back.  I want him to be here when he opens his eyes again.  He would know at a glance whether he were in his right mind and knew me.”

“I am certain he did, dear,” replied Auntie Yvette.  “I am positive he smiled at you, and I believe he knew me too.”

“I won’t believe I have found him too late.  It couldn’t be true,” wept the girl, overstrained and unstrung by long vigils, heart-sick with hope deferred, as she turned to her companion.

“Lucille!  Is it real?” came a feeble whisper from the bed—­and Lucille, in the next moments, wondered if it be true that joy cannot kill ...

* * * * *

A few weeks later, Damocles de Warrenne sat on the verandah of the Grand Imperial Hotel Royal of Kot Ghazi, which has five rooms and five million cockroaches, and stared blankly into the moonlit compound, beyond which stretched the bare rocky plain that was bounded on the north and west by mighty mountains, on the east by a mighty river, and on the south by the more mighty ocean, many hundreds of miles away.