“I am sick!  I am sick!  I am sick!” he cried louder and louder.

Some one laid a cool hand on his forehead, and he lay quiet and smiled contentedly.  The room and the people became wraithlike.  He saw them still, but he saw through them to a reality of soft meadows and summer skies, from which Mary leaned, resting her hand on his brow.  Voices spoke, but muffled, as though by many veils.  They talked of various things.

“It’s the mountain fever,” he heard one say.  “It’s a wonder he escaped it so long.”

Then the cool hand was withdrawn from his brow, and inexorably he was hurried back into the land of visions.

CHAPTER XXII

FLOWER O’ THE WORLD

Bennington de Laney found himself lying comfortably in bed, listening with closed eyes to a number of sounds.  Of these there most impressed him two.  They were a certain rhythmical muffled beat, punctuated at intervals by a slight rustling of paper; and a series of metallic clicks, softened somewhat by distance.  After a time it occurred to him to open his eyes.  At once he noticed two things more—­that he had some way acquired fresh white sheets for his bed, and that on a little table near the foot of his bunk stood a vase of flowers.  These two new impressions satisfied him for some time.  He brooded over them slowly, for his brain was weak.  Then he allowed his gaze to wander to the window.  From above its upper sash depended two long white curtains of some lacelike material, freshly starched and with deep edges, ruffled slightly in a pleasing fashion.  They stirred slowly in the warm air from the window.  Bennington watched them lazily, breathing with pleasure the balmy smell of pine, and listening to the sounds.  The clinking noises came through the open window.  He knew now that they meant the impact of sledge on drill.  Some one was drilling somewhere.  His glance roved on, and rested without surprise on a girl in a rocking chair swaying softly to and fro, and reading a book, the turning of whose leaves had caused the rustling of paper which he had noticed first.

For a long time he lay silent and contented.  Her fine brown hair had been drawn back smoothly away from her forehead into a loose knot.  She was dressed in a simple gown of white—­soft, and resting on the curves of her slender figure as lightly as down on the surface of the warm meadows.  From beneath the full skirt peeped a little slippered foot, which tapped the floor rhythmically as the chair rocked to and fro.  Finally she glanced up and discovered him locking at her.  She arose and came to the bedside, her finger on her lips.

“You mustn’t talk,” she said sweetly, a great joy in her eyes.  “I’m so glad you’re better.”

She left the room, and returned in a little time with a bowl of chicken broth, which she fed him with a spoon.  It tasted very good to him, and he felt the stronger for it, but as yet his voice seemed a long distance away.  When she turned to leave the room, however, he murmured inarticulately and attempted to stir.  She came back to the bed at once.