‘I still want to confess,’ she said. Hannah rested her head back on the pillow. ‘It’s strange,’ she said, in a light voice, ‘how clearly you can see your life when you’re seriously ill. You wonder why you ever worried about anything. All those ridiculous little difficulties that you thought were terrible and impossible tangles. They can all be blown away by one breath of truth.’

‘Hannah,’ he said, ‘I know what happened on the boat seemed serious at the time. I know we talked a lot about your marriage to Walter, and divorce, and all kinds of crazy things, but — well, I just want to say that for us to have any sort of intimate relationship — well, it could never work.’

She lay there for a while as if she hadn’t heard him. Then she smiled and turned her head towards him, her eyes dim and misted through the gauze.

‘I know what you’re trying to do,’ she told him. ‘But you don’t have to lie to me. I know that I’m going to die.’

‘Hannah, that’s ridiculous. You have a bad case of gastritis, that’s all. You’ll have to be here for two or three days, and then you’ll probably be strong enough to leave.’

‘No, Collis. I am not blind, nor deaf. I know what it is that I have. I know that there is very little hope. And I know, too, that you are trying to put my life in order for me.’

‘Hannah,’ insisted Collis, ‘you’re going to live. There is no question of fatality. None at all.’

She shook her head. ‘When I was looking after my mother, I learned two languages, from books. Perhaps I don’t pronounce them very well. But one of them was Spanish, and I know what fiebre amarilla means.’

Collis was silent.

‘You mustn’t think badly of yourself for having tried to deceive me,’ Hannah said. ‘I think I would have done the same, if I had been you. But I know that I will probably die, Collis, and so you don’t have to pretend any more.’

Hoarsely, Collis answered, ‘I didn’t mean to deny what I felt for you. I only wanted to give you the strength to fight it off. I thought that if I was out of your life, you could concentrate all your energy on getting well, instead of worrying about me.’

She lifted her hand to the gauze, as if she were reaching out to him. He raised his own hand, and their fingertips touched through the thin fabric.

‘If I thought that I had nobody in the world to turn to except for Walter, then I should be truly unhappy, and at my weakest,’ she whispered. ‘It is having you here that gives me strength. It is knowing that you could love me that gives me strength.’

He paused. ‘How do you know that I could love you?’ he said.

‘Because I do, that’s all. Dear Collis.’