"Since Étaples? Yes! Somehow or other, I was always able to keep cheerful there because there was always so much real misery around, and one felt that one was doing good in the world. Here I seem to be such a useless person, no good to anybody."
"If you say things like that, I shall forget how far we have to travel," he declared. "I need your friendship. I have come over here with rather a desperate purpose. I think I can say that I have never known fear, and yet sometimes I flinch when I think of the next few months. I want a real friend, Lady Dredlinton."
She gave him her hand.
"Josephine, if you please," she said, "and all the friendship you care to claim. There, see how rapidly we have progressed! You have been here barely a quarter of an hour and I have given you what really means a great deal to me."
"I shall prize it," he assured her, "and I shall justify it."
They began to talk of their first meeting, of the doctors and friends whom they had known together. The time slipped away. It was nearly seven o'clock when he rose to leave. Even then she seemed loath to let him go.
"What are you doing this evening?" she enquired.
"Nothing," he answered promptly.
"Come back and dine here," she begged. "I warn you, no one is coming, but I think you had better meet Henry, and, to proceed to the more selfish part of it all, I rather dread a tête-á-tête dinner this evening. Will you be very good-natured and come?"
He held her hands and looked into her eyes.