“You—no one’s needed me,” he denied, more abashed by the warmness of his welcome.
“You frightened me about you at first, Hubert,” she scolded him, “when you went away and—except for a couple of postcards—you never sent me a word. Then I heard of you through other people——”
“Gerry?”
“Yes; Gerry or Mrs. Mayhew; and I found you were always all right.”
He winced, and she reproached herself for not remembering how terribly sensitive he was about not being in the combat forces. “I certainly never expected you’d worry about me.”
“But you’ve been wounded!” she cried, observing now as he shifted a little that he moved as do those who have been hurt in the hip. “Hubert, what was it and when?”
“Air raid; that’s all. Might have got it in Paris—or London.”
“Look at me; where and when?”
“Well, then, field hospital near Fismes early in August. I’m quite all right now.”
Ruth’s eyes suddenly suffused. She had heard about that field hospital and how the German flyers had bombed it again and again, strewing death pitilessly, and how the attendants upon the wounded had worked, reckless of themselves, in an inferno. “Hubert, you were there?”