Certainly, I had heard her refuse to have anything to do with that nice, kind little Mrs Burney, but Mrs Burney had not had a passionate flame of love and faith re-lit in her heart that very night as I had. I felt loving-kind to all the world, and as though I could simply feed on snubs if only they came from some one who was really unhappy—not merely cross or spiteful.
And surely this poor woman sitting on the rugs was unhappy, and had cause to be. I remembered Dr Marriott’s face as he turned to the west, and the new light that had been lit in his doomed eyes by the strong, kind action of Anthony Kinsella—my Anthony Kinsella.
We were alone in the big yard now—Mrs Marriott and I; and silence reigned, except for the murmur of Mr Skeffington-Smythe’s voice inside the closed tent. Perhaps he was explaining to his dear little woman why he was the only man in the town not out on patrol or helping with the barricades.
I moved stealthily in the direction of my premeditated attack.
“Mrs Marriott!” I said in a pathetic way I have. “I do wish you would take care of me and let me stay with you to-night. I’ve been left out in the cold by the other women.”
She turned a pair of utterly tragic eyes upon me. Her mouth was the mouth of a woman with whom things had always gone wrong.
“I would rather be alone,” she said in her cold, dull way. This was not encouraging but I persisted, and my voice became very wistful indeed.
“Oh, do be friendly. I am a stranger here and I feel utterly lost. What does one do in laager?”
She looked at me vaguely.
“I don’t know. It is a new kind of misery to me, too.”