‘I said good-bye, dear, long ago,’ he stammered haltingly. ‘I’ve no right to behave like this.’
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What can make any difference between us?’
He took her to his heart again at those fond words, and laid his lips upon her forehead. De Blacquaire’s crutches had long since ceased to crunch along the road towards the hospital, and Jervase’s broad shoulders had gone out of sight. There was no human creature near, but far and far away overhead a lark was soaring and singing. Many and many a pair of English lovers had heard the same song as the bird had hailed the rising or the setting sun, and both the young hearts beat to that native sounding music which rang so far away from home. Their lips came together, and there was music in their hearts.
‘Take me back to the hospital, Polson,’ she said, disengaging herself from his arms. ‘I am on duty within a quarter of an hour.’
She took a little watch from her girdle, and looked at it with a cry.
‘I have barely five minutes, and I have never failed to relieve guard since I came. Is that the word, dear?’ She took his arm sedately, and walked along with him, he prodding at the wet gravel with his stick, and she half supporting him.
‘Was that true?’ she asked. ‘Did you know that I was near you?’
‘Did I know!’ said Polson in a voice that was worth a thousand protestations to her ears.
‘I always thought,’ said Irene, ‘that I disliked Major de Blacquaire until a week or two ago; but whilst you were lying there ill and delirious, he behaved so kindly that I shall never forget him. And he told me—you won’t mind, Polson, dear, you won’t let anything I say wound you? He told me that the past was buried. That awful, awful night will never be quite forgotten, but it has left nothing behind it. Your father has paid everything, and there is not a word to be spoken by anybody, ever any more.’
The lark sang in the thin sunlight as if he would break his very heart for joy, and the lovers walked homewards slowly, arm in arm.