"His arm wasn't broken when he cut their wires."
"Oh! When was it then?"
Hyde flicked with his stick at the airy heads of grass that rose up thin-sown out of a burnished carpet of lady's slipper. His manner was even but his face was dark. "He had it splintered by a revolver—shot on his way home, near our lines."
"Oh! But the Army doctors said the shot must have been fired at close quarters?"
"There, you see I'm not much of an authority, am I? No doubt, if they said so, they were right. The fact is I was knocked out myself that afternoon with a rifle bullet in the ribs. It was a hot corner for the Wintons and Dorsets."
"Were you? I'm sorry." Isabel ran her eyes with a touch of whimsical solicitude over Hyde's tall easy figure and the exquisite keeping of his white clothes. Difficult to connect him with the bloody disarray of war! "Were you too left lying between the lines?"
"With a good many others, English and German.
"There was a fellow near me that hadn't a scratch. He was frightened—mad with fear: he lay up in the long grass and wept most of the day. I never hated any one so much in my life. I could have shot him with pleasure."
"German, of course?"
Hyde smiled. "German, of course."