"I remember when you were telling of the last war that you didn't swoon at the sight of the wounded, mother," Marta whispered.
"But I was not wounded," replied Mrs Galland.
Marta ceased to be only a consciousness swimming in a haze. With the return of her faculties, she noticed that both her mother and Minna were looking significantly at her forearm; so she looked at it, too. It was bandaged.
"A cut from a shrapnel fragment," said a doctor. "Not deep," he added.
"Do I get an iron cross?" she asked, smiling faintly. It was rather pleasant to be alive.
"All the crosses—iron and bronze and silver and gold!" he replied.
"You forgot platinum," she said almost playfully, as she found nerves, muscles, and bones intact after that drop over a precipice into a black chasm. It was like the Marta of the days before she had undertaken to reform all creation, her mother was thinking. "Did I help any?" she asked seriously.
"Well, I should say so!" declared the doctor. "I should say so!" he repeated. "You did the whole business down there by the gate."
"Yes, the whole business! I brought it all on—all! I—" She flung a wild gesture at the landscape and then buried her face in her hands. "Yes, I did the whole business I—I played, smiled, lied! That awful sight—and he might not have been writing 'kill me' if I—"
The doctor grasped her shoulders to keep her from rising. He spoke the first soothing words that came to mind. There was another shudder, an effort at control, and her hands dropped and she was looking up with a dull steadiness.