'What does the doctor say about your wound?'
'It is not serious.'
'You have heard since what happened?'
'Yes.'
'It was absolutely topping the way you fought for that child's life.'
He made a deprecatory gesture, and for a moment conversation ceased. He was wondering at her voice. A subtle change had come over it. Her words were just as uncomfortably rapid as in the first days of their friendship, but there was a hidden quality caught by his ear which he could not analyse. Looking at her with eyes that had waited so long for her coming, he felt once more the affinity she held with things of nature. Her presence obliterated everything else. They were alone—the two of them. The hospital, London, the world, were dimmed to a distant background.
'After such a night,' he said, 'it is very kind of you to make this effort.'
'Not at all. We're cousins, you know.'
'I—I don't'——
'The Americans and the English, I mean. Relatives always go to each others' funerals, so I thought I might stretch a point and take in the hospital.'