Jim's only answer is a sympathetic pressure of the extremely well-fitting glove nearest him. If Willy had died instead of lived, her gloves would have fitted all the same. "But we are not out of the wood yet," continues she, with a shake of the head. "He is cured, or nearly cured, of one disease, but what about the other?" "What other?" inquires he, obstinately stupid, and with somewhat of a heart-sinking at the prospect of the engagement which he sees ahead of him. How many elbows the road makes! It seems to have been cut in places right through the wet red rock, now overhung by such a torrent of vegetation. At the head of one of the deep clefts that run up from the sea they pause, and look down upon a second sea of greenery that would seem to belong to no month less leafy than June. To June, too, belong the murmur and hum and summer trickle of running water at the ravine bottom. "I do not see why, if he goes on as swimmingly as he is now doing," says Mrs. Byng in a restless voice--"why we should not get him off in a week, even if he were carried on board the boat." "A week? Is not that rather sanguine?" "I do not think so, the sooner the better; and during that week I should think she could hardly make any attempt to see him." "Has she shown any signs of making one hitherto?" "Well, no"--rather grudgingly. "In fact, between you and me, considering that it is they who have brought him into this plight, I think they might have shown a little more solicitude about him. In the last ten days I do not believe that they have been once to the door to inquire." "You do not seem to be aware," says Jim, in a voice which, though quiet, is not pacific, "and that is odd, considering how often I told you, that until you came Mrs. Le Marchant nursed him like a mother; not like a mother, indeed"--correcting himself with a somewhat malicious intention--"for mothers grow flurried, and she never did." "You mean that she nursed him better than I do," in a jealous tone. "Well"--more generously--"how shabby of me to mind, if she did! I do not mind. God bless her for it! I always thought"--compunctiously--"that she looked a nice woman." "She _is_ nice--as nice"--descending into a slang unworthy of his ripe years--"as they make 'em." "And the girl--I suppose one can hardly call her a girl--_looks_ nice too." They are passing the Casbah, the solid Moorish fortifications, about which now hang only a few gaitered, sunburnt, baggy Zouaves. Jim has a silly hope that, if he maintains an entire silence, the current of his companion's ideas may drift into another channel; but he is soon undeceived. "I suppose that she must have been quite, _quite_ young when--when those dreadful things happened that Willy talked about in his delirium?" "Is it possible"--indignantly--"that you take the ravings of a fever-patient au pied de la lettre?"