He turned the lamp to a glow-worm glimmer, and they sat long in the darkness, with no more than a whispered word between them now and again. It was enough that the barrier was down and they were together. "My heart was dying of starvation," Hope murmured one time, "and you were so cold, so cold." "Ah, you know why," he said. "The fire was so fierce that I had to cloak it with ice." "And poor Anna!" said Hope again. "She looked upon me as the last strange product of civilisation, and no wonder." "Yes, it exercised her greatly, but we will trouble her no more." She was silent for a time. Then she said softly, "You will wait still awhile, Paul?" "I will wait your time, dearest. The knowledge that I have your love makes a new man of me. All the rest can wait." Then at last he took her up the hill again, and parted from her in the darkness before they reached the tent. And so, back to his patients, with a spring in his step and that light in his face which was like a breath of new life in the pungent wards. Thanks to Pavlof's unremitting attentions, and the careful nursing of Hope and Madame Roskova, Captain Sokolof came slowly out of the shadows on the hillside and knew to whom he owed his life. His prison kameras were cleaner and emptier than he had ever known them, when at last he was able to resume his duties. But the fact that he still lived, where so many had died, was never absent from him. He said little. Talking was not his strong point. But he never forgot, and he took his own way of showing what was in him. Colonel Zazarin had escaped the infection. He believed that a Governor's first duty was to keep himself in condition to govern, even though he did it by proxy. He kept aloof from the prisons, therefore, and allowed no man near him whose duties took him into them. And so, for that time, he went free. But, since over-anxiety for life is not the best safeguard against disease, so in due course Colonel Zazarin fell into another pit in spite of all his precautions. All through the lingering summer months the unequal fight in the prisons went on, a losing fight, incessant, heart-breaking. But for the inspiration of his new relations with Hope there were times when Paul would have cast himself down, sick to death of it all, and careless whether he ever got up again. But the thought of her, of her greater need than ever now of his help and comforting, of the still closer union that time would bring--these things braced him back to life. His heart was glad and his body responded to it, and brought him unscathed through the fiery furnace, though he spared himself no whit. It was not till the first snows came that the virulence of the plague began to slacken, and it was a month longer before Paul felt himself at liberty to occupy his own house again.