“But where are you going, Lexy?”
“I’m going to find Charles.”
In the doorway she encountered Captain Grey.
“Do you think she could stand seeing me?” he asked anxiously. “I mean do you—”
But Lexy didn’t even answer.
XXV
After all, Lexy’s search for Charles Houseman was neither difficult nor heroic, except in intention. She found him in the Lymewell Hospital. Joe told her where he was, and Joe took her there.
Houseman himself was rigidly determined not to be heroic. He had refused to go to bed, and Lexy found him in a bare, whitewashed waiting room, where he sat on a bench.
“Just came in to get the hand dressed,” he said. “I’ll go back with you now.”
The doctor advised him not to, but Charles was not very susceptible to advice. He wished to be entirely casual and matter-of-fact, and Lexy tried to humor him. They stood together in the hall of the hospital while a nurse went to get him a bottle of lotion from the dispensary, and he talked in what he intended to be an offhand manner; but Lexy could see that he was in pain, and almost exhausted, and his hair was all on end.