The mere thought was a flaring temptation. Why not? If ever man had earned woman. . . .
When the doctor made his midday visit, Francis—looking down at his swathed legs—asked one straight question.
“You mean,” said the doctor, “is there any reason, any physical reason, why you should not marry?”
“Exactly, doctor.”
“None whatever.”
“But I shall always be more or less a cripple?”
“You will walk with a limp—a slight limp. That isn’t being a cripple.”
Alone, he fought the problem out again: and decision came to him, clear-cut, obvious. She was twenty, rich, beautiful: he, a cripple—and a pauper cripple into the bargain. Leaving God out of the question, to take her in marriage would not be the act of a gentleman. . . . Chivalrous, stubborn, a fool if you will but no weakling, he traced the answer to her cablegram: “Much better thanks writing.”
In the middle of December, 1915, they shipped him—still a “stretcher-case”—to England.