He had nursed her day and night, she said, and she should stay with him, and she did, through three weeks, when Tom’s fever ran higher than hers had done, because there was more for it to feed upon, and when Tom in his ravings talked of things which made her heart ache with a new and different pain from that already there.

At first there were low whisperings and incoherent mutterings, and when Daisy asked him to whom he was talking he answered her: 

“To that other one over in the corner.  Don’t you see him?  He is waiting for me till the fever eats me up.  There’s a lot of me to eat, I’m so big and awkward, overgrown—­that’s what Daisy said.  You know Daisy, don’t you? a dainty little creature, with such delicacy of sight and touch!  She doesn’t like red hair; she said so when we thought the man in the corner was waiting for her, and she doesn’t like my freckled face and hands—­big hands, she said they were, and yet how they have worked like horses for her!  Oh, Daisy!  Daisy!  I have loved her ever since she was a child, and I drew her to school on my sled and cut her doll’s head off to tease her.  Take me quick, please, out of her sight, where my freckled face won’t offend her.”

He was talking now to that other one, the man in the corner, who, like some grim sentinel, stood there day and night, while Daisy kept her tireless watch and Tom talked on and on—­never to her—­but always to the other one, the man in the corner, whom he begged to take him away.

“Bring out your boat,” he would say.  “It’s time we were off, for the tide is at its height, and the river is running so fast.  I thought once it would take Daisy, but it left her, and I am glad.  When I am fairly over and there’s nothing but my big, freckled hulk left, cover my face and don’t let her look at me, though I’ll be white then, not red.  Oh, Daisy, Daisy, my darling, you hurt me so cruelly!”

Those were terrible days for Daisy, but she never flinched from her post, and stood resolutely between the sick man and that other one in the corner until the latter seemed to waver a little; his shadow was not so black, his presence so all-pervading, and there was hope for Tom.  His reason came back at last, and the fever left him, but weak as a child, with no power to move even his poor wasted hands which lay outside the counterpane and seemed to trouble him, for there was a wistful, pleading look in his gray eyes as they went from the hands to Daisy, while his lips whispered faintly, “Cover.”

She understood him, and with a rain of tears spread the sheet over them, and then on her knees beside him, said to him amid her sobs: 

“Forgive me, Tom, for what I did when I was crazy.  You are not repulsive to me.  You are the truest, best, and dearest friend I ever had, and I—­I—­oh, Tom, I wish I had never been born.”