“He is free, to love and be loved as it may fall, Nola. I told you he was mine, but I thought then that I was claiming him from death. He will live. He never has asked me to marry him; maybe he never will. When he recovers, he may turn to you—who can tell?”
“No, it’s only you that he thinks of, Frances. When I was watching by him he opened his eyes, and you should have seen the look in them when he saw me instead of you. He struggled to sit up and look for you, and he called your name, sharp and frightened, as if he thought somebody had taken you away from him forever.”
Frances did not need that assurance to quiet any fear of his loyalty. She had spoken the truth, only because it was the truth, but not to give Nola hope. For hope she knew there was not any, nor any love, to come to Nola out of that man’s heart.
“We’ll not talk of it,” Frances said.
“I must, I can’t let anything stand between us, Frances. If I’d been fair, all the way through—but I wasn’t. I wasn’t fair about Major King, and I wasn’t fair this time. I was fool enough to think that if you were out of the way for a little while I could make him love me! He’d never love me, never in a million years!”
Frances said nothing. But she was beginning to doubt the sincerity of Nola’s repentance. There, 307 under the shadow of her bereavement, she could think of nothing but the hopelessness of love.
“But I didn’t want you to come up just to pet me and be good to me, Frances—I wanted to give you something.”
Nola felt under her pillow, and groped for Frances’ hand, in which she placed a soft something with a stub of a feather in it.
“I have no right to keep it,” said Nola. “Do you know what it is?”
“Yes, I know.”