Seeing her distress, he laughed gaily. “Losing an arm wasn't the worst that might have happened. I'm one of the fortunate ones; I'm still above ground. The thing wasn't very painful—nothing is when you've simply got to face it. It's the thinking about pain that hurts.... Hulloa, look at the time; I can just get back to the hospital by ten. If we're late, they punish us by keeping us in next night.”
At the top of the stairs as she was seeing him out, he halted and looked back into the room. “It's quiet and cosy in there. I don't want to leave; I feel like a boy being packed off to school. You can't understand how wonderful it is after all the marching and rough times and being cut about to be allowed to sit by a fire with a woman. I loved to watch you at your sewing.”
“It's because you're tired,” she said, “more tired than you know. You must come very often and rest.”
CHAPTER IX
N the weeks that followed the little house came to know him well. Everybody in the little house treated him as though his injury were a decoration, which had been won especially in their defence. They were prouder to see him come walking up their steps with his blue hospital band on his remaining arm, than if Sir Douglas Haig himself had called upon them. Nobody took any count of the frequency of his visits—nobody except himself. Nobody seemed to think it strange that the moment the doctors had finished his dressings, he should wander off to Dolls' House Square. Nobody seemed to guess just how fond he was of the little lady. He hardly guessed himself. There were times when he wondered exactly how fond he was. He did not believe he was in love with her; the feeling that he had was too gentle. He had always understood that love was exciting, passionate and tumultuous with dreads, whereas in her presence he knew neither fears nor hesitancies. He wasn't the least in terror that he would lose her. He felt simply safe, the way a ship might feel when the winds had ceased to buffet and it lay still in a sheltered harbour on a level keel. This feeling of safety struck him as an extraordinary sensation to be produced in a soldier by a woman; he was a trifle ashamed of it, as though it were not quite manly.