But his voice was fretful rather and irritable, from shock and suffering.
“Yes, Glen Callan, of course,” he said. “I said Glen Callan, didn’t I? We are there, still, I suppose. Yes? And you went fishing in the morning, and I went shooting. Shooting?” he repeated.
All that Madge had ever felt before in her life grew dim in the intensity of this. The moment was close now, but somehow she no longer feared it. Fear could not live in these high altitudes: it died like some fever-germ.
“Yes, dear, you went shooting,” she said. “We were to meet at lunch, you know. But just before lunch there was an accident. You were shot, shot in the face.”
His hands grew restless again, and he shifted backwards and forwards in bed.
“Ah, yes,” he said, “that is just what I could not remember. I was shot—yes, yes: I remember how it stung, but it didn’t hurt very much. Then I fell down in the heather: I can’t think why, but I stumbled—I couldn’t see. I was bleeding, too; the heather was warm and sweet-smelling, but there was blood, too, that tasted so horrible—like—like blood, there is nothing—all over my face. And then—well, what then?”
“We brought you back, dear,” said she, “and you had an operation. They had to extract the shot. It was all done very satisfactorily: you are going on very well.”
Then all the nervous trembling in Evelyn’s hands and the quick twitching of his body ceased, and he lay quite still a moment, gathering himself together to hear.
“Madge,” he said, speaking more slowly, “will you please tell me all? I don’t think you have told me all yet. I want to hear it, for I feel there is more yet. I was shot: that is all I know, and am lying here with a bandaged face. Well?”
Madge’s voice did not falter; that love and pity which possessed her had for this moment anyhow complete mastery over the frailness and cowardice of the mere flesh. She just took hold of both his hands, clasping them tightly in her’s, and spoke.