There was a moment’s silence, then the young officer said quickly, a keen self-reproach in his low voice, “What am I thinking of, keeping you here to listen to all this nonsense! Go back now, Lucy, at once. You’ve been here long enough.”
“All right,” she agreed, after a minute’s preoccupation. She began to speak again, stopped short, and finally stretched her hand through the bars and gave her friend’s a warm, lingering clasp. “Good-bye, Captain Beattie,” she said, and the Englishman fancied her voice shook a little.
“Good-bye, Lucy! Wish better luck for us both. And come soon again, or you’ll find me gone,” he answered, forcing what cheerfulness he could into the cheerless words, his pity for Lucy just then stronger than any for himself.
“Good-bye,” she repeated, as earnestly as before. Then dropping down from the bars she began her cautious progress back around the prison.
“I will get to the de la Tours’ by ten o’clock,” she thought, wondering if Michelle had been long expecting her. Then, all Captain Beattie had said crowding into her mind, she glanced up at the moon with troubled eyes. As though it felt that appealing and reproachful look, its bright face vanished from her sight behind a fleecy little cloud.
Early the next morning, when Lucy returned to the hospital, she met Major Greyson in the ward. The surgeon’s face was so sad and filled with dismay that Lucy stared dumbly at him. He did not wait for her to speak.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said, drawing her aside to a window, his usually brave and hopeful voice dull and heavy. “I’ve done everything possible. I pretended to the last moment. But the German doctor himself examined all the patients to-day. He saw that the Colonel had no fever.”
As Lucy, with swiftly mounting fear, struggled to understand these incoherent phrases, Major Greyson reached out and took her hand in his.
“It’s no use, Lucy. I’ve got to tell you. Your father is considered well enough to travel. He will be sent to Germany day after to-morrow.”