“You will excuse my curiosity, I trust, Mr. Donnington. It may have seemed somewhat exaggerated to you perhaps, but I am always anxious to meet any one who was out there when I was.”
“I can understand that,” I said, with a smile.
All the former uneasy suspicion leapt to life again in his eyes. “Why?” he asked, quickly and eagerly.
“It is just the same with me,” I answered lightly. “It suggests a sort of comradeship, you know, chatting over the old experiences.”
“Certainly, certainly,” he agreed.
“I shall be glad to have an opportunity of exchanging experiences with you some day. Only we mustn’t begin, as we did just now, by firing broadsides at one another.”
“No, no, of course not. I am quite ashamed of my heat.”
“That’s all right, major. On which side were you in the war? Of course we’ve all buried the hatchet long ago.”
“I was not a combatant, Mr. Donnington. I was making money and was very successful, I am glad to say.” As I knew how he had made it, his boastful self-complacent tone was amusing. “I rejoined the army here on my return. And now there is another topic on which I should like to say just a word or two. You met Mademoiselle Dominguez last spring in Paris, I believe.”
“Yes. She was there with her mother.”