She looked down at him.
For the moment she could not speak. She set down on his couch the sheaf of golden chrysanthemums that she had brought, and the copy of the Natal Newsletter that she had thought might cheer him. She found herself about to say a very foolish thing: "So they left you your handsome eyes, Monty."
The face in which those eyes shone now was thin and drawn; and it seemed as if all the blood had been drained from it. His crutches stood in the corner at the foot of the couch. He was Monty Scott, the Dean's son, once a medical student and would-be sculptor. Yes; he had been a dilettante artist once, but he looked a thorough soldier now. The small moustache and the close-cropped hair suited him well. He had enlisted in the Halberdiers at the beginning of the War. He had got his commission and had lost his leg at Ypres.
Not again would he wear that Black Panther get-up to any fancy-dress dance.... Never again.
This was the thought, trivial and irrelevant enough, that flashed through Leslie's mind, bringing with it a rush of tears that she had to bite her lips to check. She had to clench her nails into her palms, to open her black eyes widely and smilingly, and to speak in the clearest and most flippant tone that she could summon.
"Hullo, Monty! Nice to see you again; now that I can see you. You wounded warriors are guarded by a dragon!—thanks, I'll sit down here." She turned the low chair by the couch with its back to the light. "Yes, I could hardly get your Ministering-Angel-Thou to let me through. Glared at me as if she thought I was after the spoons. (I suppose that's exactly what some of them are after," suggested Miss Long, laughing quite naturally.) "She evidently took me for just another predatory feline come to send the patient's temperature soaring upwards. It's not often I'm crushed, but——"
"Oh, Nurse Elsa is all right," said the patient, laughing too. "You know, I think she feels bound to be careful about new people. She seems to have a mania for imagining that everybody fresh may be a German spy!"
"A German? Why should she think that?"
"Oh, possibly because—well——" Young Scott lowered his voice and glanced towards that connecting door. But it had been shut. "Because she happens to be 'naturalised' herself, you know!"
They talked; Leslie ever more lightly as she was more deeply touched by the sight of the young man on his couch. So helpless, he who had been so full of movement and fitness and supple youth! So pluckily, resolutely gay, he who had been so early put out of the fun!