Jane Hubbard started, as if, wandering through one of her favourite jungles, she had perceived a snake in her path. She was thinking hard. That story which Billie had told her on the boat about the man to whom she had been engaged, whose mother had stolen his trousers on the wedding morning ... it all came back to her with a topical significance which it had never had before. It had lingered in her memory, as stories will, but it had been a detached episode, having no personal meaning for her. But now.... “She did that just to stop you going out to lunch with a man?” she said slowly. “Yes, rotten thing to do, wasn’t it?” Jane Hubbard moved to the foot of the bed, and her forceful gaze, shooting across the intervening counterpane, pinned Eustace to the pillow. She was in the mood which had caused spines in Somaliland to curl like withered leaves. “Were you ever engaged to Billie Bennett?” she demanded. Eustace Hignett licked dry lips. His face looked like a hunted melon. The flannel bandage, draped around it by loving hands, hardly supported his sagging jaw. “Why—er—” “_Were_ you?” cried Jane, stamping an imperious foot. There was that in her eye before which warriors of the lower Congo had become as chewed blotting-paper. Eustace Hignett shrivelled in the blaze. He was filled with an unendurable sense of guilt. “Well—er—yes,” he mumbled weakly. Jane Hubbard buried her face in her hands and burst into tears. She might know what to do when alligators started exploring her tent, but she was a woman. This sudden solution of steely strength into liquid weakness had on Eustace Hignett the stunning effects which the absence of the last stair has on the returning reveller creeping up to bed in the dark. It was as though his spiritual foot had come down hard on empty space and caused him to bite his tongue. Jane Hubbard had always been to him a rock of support. And now the rock had melted away and left him wallowing in a deep pool. He wallowed gratefully. It had only needed this to brace him to the point of declaring his love. His awe of this girl had momentarily vanished. He felt strong and dashing. He scrambled down the bed and peered over the foot of it at her huddled form. “Have some barley-water,” he urged. “Try a little barley-water.” It was all he had to offer her except the medicine which, by the doctor’s instructions, he took three times a day in a quarter of a glass of water. “Go away!” sobbed Jane Hubbard. The unreasonableness of this struck Eustace. “But I can’t. I’m in bed. Where could I go?” “I hate you!” “Oh, don’t say that!” “You’re still in love with her!” “Nonsense! I never was in love with her.” “Then why were you going to marry her?” “Oh, I don’t know. It seemed a good idea at the time.” “Oh! Oh! Oh!” Eustace bent a little further over the end of the bed and patted her hair. “Do have some barley-water,” he said. “Just a sip!” “You _are_ in love with her!” sobbed Jane. “I’m _not!_ I love _you!_”