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Page 515
can suffer longer. Dear heart, if I should fail and you are strong enough to hold me, ride on and ride faster. I will not feel it then. Better still, let one of the men mount behind and hold me."
There was good sense in what he said, and Joanna yielded except that she would let no one else hold him. Her arms ached and her body screamed with pain because she held herself all twisted so as to avoid rubbing Geoffrey's torn shoulder. To compound her misery, it began to rain on the second day. Geoffrey shivered, but he constantly threw off the cloak with which Joanna tried to cover him, muttering that the rain was goodso cool. And when Joanna touched his face she found he was burning with fever.
Despite her weariness, Joanna did not sleep at all that night. Geoffrey tossed and moaned and called pathetically for her, but he did not know her when she soothed him. She did not think they could go further, only toward morning his fever dropped and he begged hoarsely to continue.
"I cannot bear to get a little better and then begin again, he sighed. "I want to go home where I can rest."
Again Joanna yielded, not only because of Geoffrey's pleading but because she could do so little for him in a woodland camp, because she knew he was so near unconscious most of the time now that he suffered less. It was growing colder too, especially at night, and they had nothing really dry and warm. To let Geoffrey lie cold and wet might be his death as easily as traveling onward. Throughout the day Geoffrey slipped in and out of consciousness, in and out of delirium. He would not eat at all that night, and did not recognize Joanna again.
Edwina consulted Sir Guy and then, trembling, confronted her mistress. "You must leave him to me," she said. "He does not know you anyway, and you must sleep or you will not be fit to help him."
"Yes, yes," Joanna agreed absently, "I will sleep. Let me be, Edwina."
"If you stay here, you will not sleep. You will hear him call and run to him even though you know he does not know you. The rain is over. You must go out of here and sleep

 
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