"I am glad that you remember," she murmured.
"I have forgotten nothing," he went on. "I think that those ten days of convalescence out in the gardens of your villa and down by the sea were the most wonderful days I ever spent."
"I love to hear you say so," she confessed.
"Out there," he continued, "the whole show was hideous from beginning to end, a ghastly, terrible drama, played out amongst all the accompaniments which make hell out of earth. And yet the thing gripped. The tragedy of Ypres came and I escaped from the hospital."
"You were not fit to go. They all said that."
"I couldn't help it," he answered. "The guns were there, calling, and one forgot. I've been back to England three times since then, and each time one thought was foremost in my mind—'shall I meet Sister Josephine?'"
"But you never even made enquiries," she reminded him. "At my hospital I made it a strict rule that our names in civil life were never mentioned or divulged, but afterwards you could have found out."
He touched her left hand very lightly, lingered for a moment on her fourth finger.
"It was the ring," he said. "I knew that you were married, and somehow, knowing that, I desired to know no more. I suppose that sounds rather like a cry from Noah's Ark, but I couldn't help it. I just felt like that."
"And now you probably know a good deal about me," she remarked, with a rather sad smile. "I have been married nine years. I gather that you know my husband by name and repute."