“Jack wounded!—oh, he is not wounded,” replied Virginia. She rose and stood wildly looking down upon him.
He saw his mistake and promptly retracted what he could.
“If you don't know of it, it can't be true,” he urged kindly. “So many rumours are afloat that half of them are without foundation. However, I will make inquiries if you wish,” and he passed on with a promise to return at once.
For a time Virginia stood blankly gazing after him; then she turned steadily and took down her bonnet from the wardrobe. She even went to the bureau and carefully tied the pink ribbon strings beneath her chin.
“I am going out, Mammy Riah,” she said when she had finished. “No, don't tell me I mustn't—I am going out, I say.”
She stamped her foot impatiently, but Mammy Riah made no protest.
“Des let's go den,” she returned, smoothing her head handkerchief as she prepared to follow.
The sun was already high above, and the breeze, which had blown for three days from the river, had dropped suddenly since dawn. Down the brick pavement the relentless glare flashed back into the sky which hung hot blue overhead. To Virginia, coming from the shade of her rooms, the city seemed a furnace and the steady murmur a great discord in which every note was one of pain.
Other women looking for their wounded hurried by her—one stopped to ask if she had been into the unused tobacco warehouse and if she had seen there a boy she knew by name? Another, with lint bandages in her hand, begged her to come into a church hard by and assist in ravelling linen for the surgeons. Then she looked down, saw the girl's figure, and grew nervous. “You are not fit, my dear, go home,” she urged, but Virginia shook her head and smiled.
“I am looking for my husband,” she answered in a cold voice and passed on. Mammy Riah caught up with her, but she broke away. “Go home if you want to—oh, go back,” she cried irritably. “I am looking for Jack, you know.”