Fever supervened on Jim Done’s injuries, and December passed as he lay helpless in Mary Kyley’s tent, babbling of Chisley, of life on the Francis Cadman, and of Diamond Gully and Boobyalla.  The injury to his head proved the most serious wound, and there were moments when despair filled the heart of Aurora; but she nursed him with a devotion that overlooked nothing, and Mrs. Kyley, and Ben, and the business were all sacrificed to the patient’s needs.  Mrs. Kyley and Ben made the sacrifice gladly, the former because of the big soft heart she hid under her formidable bulk, and Ben because gall and wormwood were sweet compared with the bitterness he felt in being one of the many whose neglect had contributed to the sacrifice of the rebels in the stockade.  Business was practically suspended in the shanty while Done lay in the adjoining tent, only peaceful drinkers being permitted to refresh themselves with Mary’s wonderful rum.  Mrs. Ben, too, was indefatigable in her care of the wounded man; but Aurora was jealous of her labour of love, and Mary was sometimes compelled to force her to take rest, and to go out in the open air and make some effort to drive the pallor from her cheeks.

Aurora’s beauty was entirely the beauty of perfect health and fine vitality; under the influence of her long labours and the wearing anxiety she endured her good looks faded.  She was apparently years older than she had seemed a month before.

‘Your prettiness is all dying out of you, dear,’ said Mary; ’you must rest yourself, you must go into the air and let the roses freshen again, or the boy won’t look at you when he wakes.’

‘’Twill all come back fast enough when he is well,’ Aurora would answer; and it was into her pale face that Jim gazed with a long look of childlike gravity when he opened his eyes to consciousness.  She detected the light of reason in his gaze, and her fingers clasped his hand.  From her face his eyes went slowly round the apartment, lingering with an intent look on familiar objects, and then they went to the roof, and for fully twenty minutes he watched the glowing patch where a sunbeam struck the canvas cover, and there was in his face something of the wonder of a creature born into a new world.  Aurora was very grave:  she did not smile, her heart felt no elation—­it was numb and old.  Jim had a perplexing sensation of feathery lightness; he felt like a frail snowflake in an unsubstantial world.  The bed under him was a bed of gossamer, if not wholly visionary.  He might fall through at any moment, and if he did he might go on falling endlessly, a pinch of down in a bottomless abyss.  He tried to close his fingers on Aurora’s strong hand.  He knew she was there, and she was real, substantial, although something of the wanness of this mysterious world was about her.

‘Joy,’ he whispered.  She bent her head to him.  ‘Where—­what—­’ He relapsed with a sigh.  After all, it did not matter.

‘You have been very ill, Jimmy,’ she said.