"My beautiful Hester!" he said, unsteadily, and then again, "Nonsense!"
But, almost on the moment, the man nurse returned and she was obliged to leave him, but not without throbbing promises of the to-morrow's return, and then there took place, downstairs in an anteroom, a long, a closeted, and very private interview with a surgeon and more red tape and filing of applications. She was so weak from crying that a nurse was called finally to help her through the corridors to her car.
Gerald's left lung was burned out and he had three, possibly four, weeks to live.
All the way home, in her tan limousine with the little yellow curtains, she sat quite upright, away from the upholstery, crying down her uncovered face, but a sudden, an exultant determination hardening in her mind.
* * * * *
That night a strange conversation took place in the Riverside Drive apartment. She sat on Wheeler's left knee, toying with his platinum chain, a strained, a rather terrible pallor out in her face, but the sobs well under her voice, and its modulation about normal. She had been talking for over two hours, silencing his every interruption until he had fallen quite still.
"And—and that's all, Wheeler," she ended up. "I've told you everything. We were never more than just—friends—Gerald and me. You must take my word for it, because I swear it before God."
"I take your word, Hester," he said, huskily.
"And there he lies, Wheeler, without—without any eyes in his head. Just as if they'd been burned out by irons. And he—he smiles when he talks. That's the awful part. Smiles like—well, I guess like the angel he—he almost is. You see, he says it's a glory to carry the wounds of his country. Just think! just think! that boy to feel that, the way he lies there!"
"Poor boy! Poor, poor boy!"