But the most obstinate and determined of men must knock under when typhus says the word, and there was no exemption for Sokolof. The man's courage, which after all was perhaps quite as much dogged obstinacy, appealed strongly to Paul, and he determined to save him if salvation were in any way possible. He camped him out on the hills unknown to himself, and set Hope Palma and Anna Roskova to nurse him through the crisis. CHAPTER XVIII HOW THE NEWS CAME THAT DREW THEM TOGETHER Hope delayed makes the heart sick, but it does not kill. And the sick heart craves human sympathy as the storm-beaten flower craves the sun. And when the sun shines the flower turns towards it and is grateful. As the weeks and months passed and brought no further news of Serge, Hope's expectation began to weaken, and at last to die. "Surely," she said to herself, "if he were alive he would have managed to send the promised word to Paul in some way. Mikhail Barenin's news must be true." Pavlof, in rigid honour, suggested the possibility of the word having been duly sent and having been arrested on the way. Pressed to the wall by her questionings, however, he had to acknowledge that the prearranged message would have come in such a form that the most vindictive or hyper-sensitive censor could not possibly have read into it any but the most patently domestic intelligence. Pressed still harder, he had to confess that, in spite of the hopes he so constantly impressed upon her, his own were growing weaker. With a heavy heart he offered to do all in his power to further her wishes, whatever they might be, even to the point of helping her to leave Kara. But was forced, in discussion, to acknowledge it a useless risk and likely to lead to no result. "You want to get rid of me," said she. "I would count my life as nothing if it could help you," was his reply. It may not be accounted very surprising that, under conditions so complex, Hope Palma's heart turned somewhat, and almost imperceptibly, towards this man into whose companionship she had been so strangely and so closely cast. Her heart was sick. It had fed on hope till hope was bare as a bone and no longer afforded her starved soul any nourishment. It was over two years since she saw her husband last. She was very human and she craved human sympathy. Where should she turn for it but to this man whose heart and hand were open to all, and who alone could enter fully into her griefs and perplexities? His unselfish devotion and ceaseless thought for others, his clean heart and high bearing, these things were daily under her eyes, and they wrought upon her as the soft rain and sunshine on the flower. That he loved her still as passionately as ever, she knew, in spite of all his cautiousness and frosty veilings. But she knew, too, that no word of love would ever pass his lips while the possibility of wrong to his friend might remain.