The Wounded Name

by D. K. Broster

"How intolerable, I suppose you mean? But I am not being that now, am I? Those first days at Arbelles, however——" He broke off, and looked up at him keenly. "Now, confess, Laurent, that I did not make your task easy for you!"

"It was, perhaps, a little like nursing a porcupine," acknowledged the nurse, smiling. "You would not let me show what I felt. But now that I know what you had just been through, I wonder you did not go out of your mind."

Aymar looked away. "I think I was pretty near it once or twice," he said after a moment, "or I could not have felt, as I did, that everyone in the world was against me—even you. Sometimes I used to dream that it was all a dream—a nightmare. Then I would wake up . . . still in the nightmare. So—I suppose I wanted to hurt someone, too!" He turned his eyes on Laurent again. "Yet you stayed, and put up with it—and with all my subsequent tiresomeness, too! For though I know you have forgiven me for those early days, what about yesterday evening?"

"Yesterday evening?" exclaimed Laurent. What had happened in that remote epoch, yesterday evening?

"Yes, yesterday evening, when I sat in a ditch and refused to stir, and you had to use . . . drastic measures! If I can be unapproachable as you call it, you can certainly be severe, mon ami!"

"Oh, do let's forget about yesterday evening!" cried Laurent, flushing in the moonlight.

"Agreed!" said Aymar, laughing. "As a matter of fact, I don't remember much about the latter part of it. Between trying to come to a decision about the future which I had not expected to have to take for days yet, and the jolting of that infernal cart, I really had such a headache that I could hardly see. You observe that I am not too proud to make excuses—to you."

Laurent suddenly sat down by him. "And what excuses am I to make," he said, averting his face, "for my horrible blindness of this morning? When I saw what I had done, I could have beaten my head against the cave wall."

Aymar put his hand over his. "Never mind. It is the only time you have ever failed—and I daresay I should have made it clearer to you that I was absolutely on the rack till I knew what you thought . . . I don't mind telling you now—only do not let us talk of it again—that in those few minutes, or hours, or whatever they were, when I thought you had thrown me over, I saw a third and much simpler alternative to those of leaving France or staying to face the future. If you had deserted me I should have done what you did this afternoon, Laurent—I should have gone for a swim. . . . But I should not have come back again."

Laurent, hearing the sincerity of that intention in the quiet voice, turned rather pale. Had so much, then, hung on his verdict? He was very far indeed from elation; he had never felt more humble in his life.