Ill as he was, I did not mean to let him think I was ignorant of his motive.  “You can’t bear a woman whose life you have attempted,” I said, in my coldest and most deliberate way, “to have a hand in nursing you!  You can’t bear to let her heap coals of fire on your head!  In that you are right.  But, remember, you have attempted my life too; you have twice done your best to get me murdered.”

He did not pretend to deny it.  He was too weak for subterfuges.  He only writhed as he lay.  “You are a man,” he said, shortly, “and she is a woman.  That is all the difference.”  Then he paused for a minute or two.  “Don’t let her come near me,” he moaned once more, in a piteous voice.  “Don’t let her come near me!”

“I will not,” I answered.  “She shall not come near you.  I spare you that.  But you will have to eat the food she prepares; and you know she will not poison you.  You will have to be tended by the servants she chooses; and you know they will not murder you.  She can heap coals of fire on your head without coming into your tent.  Consider that you sought to take her life—­and she seeks to save yours!  She is as anxious to keep you alive as you are anxious to kill her.”

He lay as in a reverie.  His long white hair made his clear-cut, thin face look more unearthly than ever, with the hectic flush of fever upon it.  At last he turned to me.  “We each work for our own ends,” he said, in a weary way.  “We pursue our own objects.  It suits me to get rid of her:  it suits her to keep me alive.  I am no good to her dead; living, she expects to wring a confession out of me.  But she shall not have it.  Tenacity of purpose is the one thing I admire in life.  She has the tenacity of purpose—­and so have I. Cumberledge, don’t you see it is a mere duel of endurance between us?”

“And may the just side win,” I answered, solemnly.

It was several days later before he spoke to me of it again.  Hilda had brought some food to the door of the tent and passed it in to me for our patient.  “How is he now?” she whispered.

Sebastian overheard her voice, and, cowering within himself, still managed to answer:  “Better, getting better.  I shall soon be well now.  You have carried your point.  You have cured your enemy.”

“Thank God for that!” Hilda said, and glided away silently.

Sebastian ate his cup of arrowroot in silence; then he looked at me with wistful, musing eyes.  “Cumberledge,” he murmured at last; “after all, I can’t help admiring that woman.  She is the only person who has ever checkmated me.  She checkmates me every time.  Steadfastness is what I love.  Her steadfastness of purpose and her determination move me.”

“I wish they would move you to tell the truth,” I answered.