“What puzzle?”
“Why an inspector of hospitals should hold an inquiry upon a Zeppelin raid?”
“I’m afraid I cannot,” she admitted. “Hugh certainly seems to have become a most mysterious person, but then, as you know, I haven’t seen quite so much of him lately. Your change, Captain Granet, doesn’t seem to have done you much good. Has your wound been troubling you?”
He rose abruptly and stood before her.
“Do you care whether my wound is troubling me or not?” he asked. “Do you care anything at all about me?”
There was a moment’s silence.
“I care very much,” she confessed.
He seemed suddenly a changed person. The lines which had certainly appeared in his face during the last few days, become more noticeable. He leaned towards her eagerly.
“Miss Conyers,” he went on, “Geraldine, I want you to care—enough for the big things. Don’t interrupt me, please. Listen to what I have to say. Somehow or other, the world has gone amiss with me lately. They won’t have me back, my place has been filled up, I can’t get any fighting. They’ve shelved me at the War Office; they talk about a home adjutancy. I can’t stick it, I have lived amongst the big things too long. I’m sick of waiting about, doing nothing—sick to death. I want to get away. There’s some work I could do in America. You understand?”
“Not in the least,” Geraldine told him frankly.