The very thing that was uppermost in his mind to be avoided suddenly bubbled to his lips, almost, it would seem, in defiance of his own will.
"What about the small--the small-pox ?" he asked.
"We have got it under," replied Jack quietly.

"We had a very bad time for three days, but we got all the cases isolated and prevented it from spreading.

Of course, we could do little or nothing to save them; they died." Durnovo had the air of a whipped dog.

His mind was a blank.

He simply had nothing to say; the humiliation of utter self-contempt was his.
"You need not be afraid to come back now," Jack Meredith went on, with a strange refinement of cruelty.
And that was all he ever said about it.
"Will it be convenient for you to meet me on the beach at four o'clock this afternoon ?" he asked, when Durnovo was in the saddle.
"Yes." "All right--four o'clock." He turned and deliberately went back to the bungalow.
There are some friendships where the intercourse is only the seed which absence duly germinates.