With a swift, sudden movement, as though her limbs relaxed abruptly and responded automatically to the rush of pity that leapt up within her, submerging for the time all other feeling, she approached the bed and knelt beside it and put her arms about him, as she might have put them about a suffering child, appealing for sympathy. She drew his head to her shoulder, and with the so sadly altered face hidden from her sight against her breast, felt her courage returning, and was able to articulate his name, and murmur soothing words to him as she caressed the silvered hair. "Herbert!--my dear," she said; "it's Pamela. It's all right, dear... Don't cry... don't cry." "I've been ill," he said, speaking thickly, with a slight impediment that made the words difficult to understand. "I've wanted you, Pam... You've been a long time coming." He spoke querulously, and sobbed again with a sort of complaining self-pity, as though he felt she had been neglectful, that she ought to have known and come to him before. Pamela would have realised without the doctor's preparation that the enfeebled mind had lost its power to remember recent events. It was quite possible that he did not realise even where he was, that, had he been told, he would have failed to recall the circumstances of his coming to Pretoria. The subject of their differences, of his desertion of her, had faded entirely from his recollection. He only knew that he was ill, that he had wanted her, and that she had been long in coming. He took up his complaint again. "I've wanted you," he reiterated. "I've kept on wanting you. Why didn't you come sooner?" "I came as soon as I could," she answered soothingly. "They would not let me see you before. You've been very ill. You are getting better now. Soon you will be much stronger, and then we will go home." He lay still for a second or so, taking in the significance of her words. "Home!" he repeated vaguely... "Yes." He drew in his breath quiveringly like a tired child, and lay back on the pillow and stared at her with the familiar eyes set in the unfamiliar face. Pamela felt oddly disconcerted by his gaze, and only with difficulty forced herself to meet it. She wished that he would not look at her, wished that he had remained with his face hidden against her breast. "I should like to go home," he said. He spoke with a puzzled intonation as though not quite dear in his mind as to where home was; but very sure of one thing, that home meant being with Pamela, and that he wanted to be with her. "You'll stay with me?" he asked presently. "I will come and see you often," she answered, "every day. I have come to be with you. As soon as you are able to be moved I will take you away. You must make haste and get strong."