Then he turned to her.  “Sorry to have made such an exhibition of myself.  It’s all this infernal sand.  Yes, I’ll have some more, please.  It does me good.  Then I’ll get back to my own den and have a sleep.”

“You can sleep here,” Burke said unexpectedly.  “No one will disturb you.  Sylvia never sits here in the afternoon.”

Again Sylvia saw that strange look in Guy’s eyes, a swift intent glance and then the instant falling of the lids.

“You’re very—­kind,” said Guy.  “But I think I’ll get back to my own quarters all the same.”

Impulsively Sylvia intervened.  “Oh, Guy, please,—­don’t go back to that horrible little shanty on the sand!  I got a room all ready for you yesterday—­if you will only use it.”

He turned to her.  For a second his look was upon her also, and it seemed to her in that moment that she and Burke had united cruelly to bait some desperate animal.  It sent such a shock through her that she shrank in spite of herself.

And then for the first time she heard Guy laugh, and it was a sound more dreadful than his cough had been, a catching, painful sound that was more like a cry—­the hunger-cry of a prowling beast of the desert.

He got up as he uttered it, and stretched his arms above his head.  She saw that his hands were clenched.

“Oh, don’t overdo it, I say!” he begged.  “Hospitality is all very well, but it can be carried too far.  Ask Burke if it can’t!  Besides, two’s company and three’s the deuce.  So I’ll be going—­and many thanks!”

He was gone with the words, snatching his hat from a chair where he had thrown it, and departing into the glare of the desert with never a backward glance.

Sylvia turned swiftly to her husband, and found his eyes upon her.

“With a gasping cry she caught his arm.  Oh, can’t you go after him?  Can’t you bring him back?”

He freed the arm to put it round her, with the gesture of one who comforts a hurt child.  “My dear, it’s no good,” he said.  “Let him go!”

“But, Burke—­” she cried.  “Oh, Burke——­”

“I know,” he made answer, still soothing her.  “But it can’t be done—­anyhow at present.  You’ll drive him away if you attempt it.  I know.  I’ve done it.  Leave him alone till the devil has gone out of him!  He’ll come back then—­and be decent—­for a time.”

His meaning was unmistakable.  The force of what he said drove in upon her irresistibly.  She burst into tears, hiding her face against his shoulder in her distress.

“But how dreadful!  Oh, how dreadful!  He is killing himself.  I think—­the Guy—­I knew—­is dead already.”

“No, he isn’t,” Burke said, and he held her with sudden closeness as he said it.  “He isn’t—­and that’s the hell of it.  But you can’t save him.  No one can.”

She lifted her face sharply.  There was something intolerable in the words.  With the tears upon her cheeks she challenged them.