Jocelyn had risen as if to intimate that, if he cared to do so, they would sit in the verandah. “Why did Mr. Durnovo come back?” she repeated; for Jack did not seem to have heard the question. He was drawing forward a cane chair with the leisurely debonnair grace that was his, and, before replying, he considered for a moment. “To get quinine,” he answered. Without looking at her, he seemed to divine that he had made a mistake. He seemed to know that she had flushed suddenly to the roots of her hair, with a distressed look in her eyes. The reason was too trivial. She could only draw one conclusion. “No,” he continued; “to tell you the truth, I think his nerve gave way a little. His health is undermined by this climate. He has been too long in Africa. We have had a bad time at Msala. We have had small-pox in the camp. Oscard and I have been doing doughty deeds. I feel convinced that, if we applied to some Society, we should get something or other--a testimonial or a monument--also Joseph.” “I like Joseph,” she said in a low tone. “So do I. If circumstances had been different--if Joseph had not been my domestic servant--I should have liked him for a friend.” He was looking straight in front of him with a singular fixity. It is possible that he was conscious of the sidelong scrutiny which he was undergoing. “And you--you have been all right?” she said lightly. “Oh, yes,” with a laugh. “I have not brought the infection down to Loango; you need not be afraid of that.” For a moment she looked as if she were going to explain that she was not “afraid of that.” Then she changed her mind and let it pass, as he seemed to believe. “Joseph constructed a disinfecting room with a wood-smoke fire, or something of that description, and he has been disinfecting everything, down to Oscard's pipes.” She gave a little laugh, which stopped suddenly. “Was it very bad?” she asked. “Oh, no. We took it in time, you see. We had eleven deaths. And now we are all right. We are only waiting for Durnovo to join, and then we shall make a start. Of course, somebody else could have come down for the quinine.” “Yes.” He glanced at her beneath his lashes before going on, “But, as Durnovo's nerves were a little shaken, it--was just as well, don't you know, to get him out of it all.” “I suppose he got himself out of it all?” she said quietly. “Well--to a certain extent. With our approval, you understand.” Men have an esprit de sexe as well as women. They like to hustle the cowards through with the crowd, unobserved. “It is a strange thing,” said Jocelyn, with a woman's scorn of the man who fears those things of which she herself has no sort of dread, “a very strange thing, that Mr. Durnovo said nothing about it down here. It is not known in Loango that you had small-pox in the camp.” “Well, you see, when he left we were not quite sure about it.”