“Is the Lieutenant feeling better?”

The Lieutenant surveyed him gravely.

“You are one of our hospital stewards.”

“Yes, Lieutenant.”

“Why ar’n’t you with the regiment?”

“I was wounded, too, sir.  I got it same time you did, Lieutenant.”

“Am I wounded?  Of course, I remember.  Is this a hospital ship?”

The steward shrugged his shoulders.  “She’s one of the transports.  They have turned her over to the fever cases.”

The Lieutenant opened his lips to ask another question; but his own body answered that one, and for a moment he lay silent.

“Do they know up North that I—­that I’m all right?”

“Oh, yes, the papers had it in—­there was pictures of the Lieutenant in some of them.”

“Then I’ve been ill some time?”

“Oh, about eight days.”

The soldier moved uneasily, and the nurse in him became uppermost.

“I guess the Lieutenant hadn’t better talk any more,” he said.  It was his voice now which held authority.

The Lieutenant looked out at the palms and the silent gloomy mountains and the empty coast-line, where the same wave was rising and falling with weary persistence.

“Eight days,” he said.  His eyes shut quickly, as though with a sudden touch of pain.  He turned his head and sought for the figure at the foot of the cot.  Already the figure had grown faint and was receding and swaying.

“Has any one written or cabled?” the Lieutenant spoke, hurriedly.  He was fearful lest the figure should disappear altogether before he could obtain his answer.  “Has any one come?”

“Why, they couldn’t get here, Lieutenant, not yet.”

The voice came very faintly.  “You go to sleep now, and I’ll run and fetch some letters and telegrams.  When you wake up, maybe I’ll have a lot for you.”

But the Lieutenant caught the nurse by the wrist, and crushed his hand in his own thin fingers.  They were hot, and left the steward’s skin wet with perspiration.  The Lieutenant laughed gayly.

“You see, Doctor,” he said, briskly, “that you can’t kill me.  I can’t die.  I’ve got to live, you understand.  Because, sir, she said she would come.  She said if I was wounded, or if I was ill, she would come to me.  She didn’t care what people thought.  She would come anyway and nurse me—­well, she will come.

“So, Doctor—­old man—­” He plucked at the steward’s sleeve, and stroked his hand eagerly, “old man—­” he began again, beseechingly, “you’ll not let me die until she comes, will you?  What?  No, I know I won’t die.  Nothing made by man can kill me.  No, not until she comes.  Then, after that—­eight days, she’ll be here soon, any moment?  What?  You think so, too?  Don’t you?  Surely, yes, any moment.  Yes, I’ll go to sleep now, and when you see her rowing out from shore you wake me.  You’ll know her; you can’t make a mistake.  She is like—­no, there is no one like her—­but you can’t make a mistake.”