Half-conscious, half-hearing, altogether unseeing, I thought there were two Voices near me.  I couldn’t understand what they said.  One of the Voices was gently and persistently applying cold and soothing applications to my forehead.  Another Voice chafed my hands.  I thought one said, “Achmet,” and the other replied, “Sahib.”  I knew I must be dreaming.  But it was a pleasant dream enough.

Quite suddenly somebody said in good, anxious English: 

“Thank God! you are better!”

I had opened my eyes.  There was the whish-whish-whishing little brook, the good brown pines, with their heavenly odor.  And there was the face of Nicholas Jelnik, bent over me.  And beside him, gravely concerned and troubled, Boris.

I looked from one to the other, both so clear-eyed, so kind, so safe; and then I remembered.

“Sophy!  Sophy!” He had his arms around me, in a close, protecting clasp, while Boris pawed my skirts, and cried over me in loving, honest dog fashion, and licked my wet cheek with his affectionate tongue.  I slipped my arm around the big dog’s neck, and clung to the two of them.  And it seemed to me that while I clung thus, with my head bent and my face hidden, one of them kissed my hair.

“It never occurred to me—­that there might be danger for you,” he was whispering.  “To have that horror come near you—­oh, my God!  Oh, my God!”

I was terrified at sight of his face, dead-white, with eyes of steel, and straight lips, and pinched nostrils; the terrible face of the avenging white man, a face as inexorable as judgment.  I hid my own before it, and trembled; and yet was glad that I had seen it.

I stammered:  “There was—­a devil—­and then a Jinnee came.  And I heard—­sounds.  Then I fell.  Did—­did The Jinnee—­” My voice died in my throat.

His eyes were ice, his mouth a grim, pale line.

“That has been attended to,” he said composedly.

He blamed himself for having been thoughtless.  “But I was so glad to have you come here, that afternoon, that I could think of nothing else!” And it seemed that this particular bit of woodland was his, bought because its quiet beauty pleased him.  He was in the habit of coming here frequently; it had never occurred to him that danger could lurk near it.

“I thought I heard—­somebody calling somebody else ‘Achmet.’” I told him, confusedly.  “And there was a Jinnee, really there was.  And two Voices.  Who brought me here?  Did you find me, over there?”

“You were not hard to carry,” he said evasively.

“But The Jinnee?”

“The Jinnee did exactly what a good Jinnee always does, his duty.  Having done it, he disappeared.  Didn’t I tell you you’re not to think of what’s happened?  It is finished,” said Mr. Jelnik, peremptorily.

I asked no more questions.

“Do you think you are able to walk now?” he asked.

I tried to, with shaking knees.  At the edge of the field I grew faint again, and staggered, and was unpleasantly sick.