“Is all well, sweetheart?  Send back word by bearer,” he wrote, and told the man not to return without an answer.

The orderly departed, and for a while Merryon devoted himself to the matter in hand, and crushed his anxiety into the background.  But at the end of an hour he was chafing in a fever of impatience.  What delayed the fellow?  In Heaven’s name, why was he so long?

Ghastly possibilities arose in his mind, fears unspeakable that he dared not face.  He forced himself to attend to business, but the suspense was becoming intolerable.  He began to realize that he could not stand it much longer.

He was nearing desperation when the colonel came unexpectedly upon the scene, unshaven and haggard as he was himself, but firm as a rock in the face of adversity.

He joined Merryon, and received the latter’s report, grimly taciturn.  They talked together for a space of needs and expediencies.  The fell disease had got to be checked somehow.  He spoke of recalling the officers on leave.  There had been such a huge sick list that summer that they were reduced to less than half their normal strength.

“You’re worth a good many,” he said to Merryon, half-grudgingly, “but you can’t work miracles.  Besides, you’ve got—­” He broke off abruptly.  “How’s your wife?”

“That’s what I don’t know, sir.”  Feverishly Merryon made answer.  “I left her last night.

She was well then.  But since—­I sent down an orderly over an hour ago.  He’s not come back.”

“Confound it!” said the colonel, testily.  “You’d better go yourself.”

Merryon glanced swiftly round.

“Yes, go, go!” the colonel reiterated, irritably.  “I’ll relieve you for a spell.  Go and satisfy yourself—­and me!  None but an infernal fool would have kept her here,” he added, in a growling undertone, as Merryon lifted a hand in brief salute and started away through the sodden mists.

He went as he had never gone in his life before, and as he went the mists parted before him and a blinding ray of sunshine came smiting through the gap like the sword of the destroyer.  The simile rushed through his mind and out again, even as the grey mist-curtain closed once more.

He reached the bungalow.  It stood like a shrouded ghost, and the drip, drip, drip of the rain on the veranda came to him like a death-knell.

A gaunt figure met him almost on the threshold, and he recognized his messenger with a sharp sense of coming disaster.  The man stood mutely at the salute.

“Well?  Well?  Speak!” he ordered, nearly beside himself with anxiety.  “Why didn’t you come back with an answer?”

The man spoke with deep submission. “Sahib, there was no answer.”

“What do you mean by that?  What the—­

Here, let me pass!” cried Merryon, in a ferment.  “There must have been—­some sort of answer.”

“No, sahib.  No answer.”  The man spoke with inscrutable composure.  “The mem-sahib has not come back,” he said.  “Let the sahib see for himself.”