"And they—Grace and Cromer—believe there is some understanding between us, that we grew to care for each other when the four of us went about together?"
"Yes," I said desperately; the hill suddenly seemed to tip towards me, it seemed to carry with it the smell of iodoform and disinfectant.
And then the amazing and paralysing thing happened: Captain Markham suddenly put his arm round me.
"Well," he said, "isn't it true, Pam! My God! child, isn't it true? Don't I love you?—you ridiculous child, you wonderful, wonderful thing with your strange crooked little mouth and your great eyes! Oh! Pam, my little, little girl—didn't you know I cared!"
The hill tipped back into place like a giant sitting back on its haunches, and the silver tide seemed to ripple down it to ultimately engulf us.
X
Love is a cloak and is made in different styles; some people wrap themselves tightly in it, and there is only just enough to go round them: it is their cloak, and if Cupid himself, dimpled and in his birthday suit, came and sat beside them on the top of a motor-bus in the rain, they wouldn't go shares. For other people Love is a large cloak, voluminous and overlapping, and capable of sheltering, warming, and comforting quite a lot of people round the hem.
My heart ached for him as I sat beside him. He held my hand very tightly with his thin fingers, almost like a frightened child, and I had a feeling that he feared to drift out and I was his anchor, and I wished that I could drift out with him.
"Pam," he said once or twice, and I had a feeling as if he were saying "Mother," and I answered, "Yes, dear," and by-and-by he smiled and whispered again, "Pam."
The matron kept coming in and out. Once or twice she fed Walter Markham with a teaspoonful of brandy, once she brought me a cup of bovril; she seemed just the same as when I first met her hours ago, like warm snow immeasurably deep.