'Can you leave here in half an hour?' he asked. 'If that is possible you may see him.'
'Yes,' I answered.
Nannie packed for me, while I got ready. She was very quiet and good, only said, 'My lamb, my lamb, tell him——'
'I will tell him all your eyes say, darling,' and I got into the car.
I do not remember what happened then. I felt nothing. I was numb. I only knew that kind hands passed me on from car to boat, and then from boat to train, and car again, till I stood at midnight in a little room opposite a sister with a tired face, waiting for her to speak.
'Ah,' she said, 'you have been very quick; we hardly hoped to be in time to reach you.' Then she told me that he had been brought in the day before, hopelessly wounded in the body.
'It is a miracle that he has lasted with such appalling wounds; he is only living on his willpower, waiting for you.'
'Is he in pain?' I asked.
'At first, yes, agony all the time, but now there are intervals between the bouts of pain, and at the end I think he will not suffer.'
'But you can keep it down with morphia,' I said quiveringly.