“Alive, alive, my dear. Bad rip in the shoulder—worn out—weak—shattered—but good for a while yet—yes, yes—certainement!”
With a wayward impulse, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek. The embrace disarranged his glasses and flushed his face like a schoolgirl’s, but his eyes were full of embarrassed delight.
“There, there,” he said, “we’ll take care of him—!” Then suddenly he paused, for the real significance of her action dawned upon him.
“Dear me,” he said in disturbed meditation; “dear me!”
She suddenly opened the bedroom door and went in, followed by Nic. The Regimental Surgeon dropped his mouth and cheeks in his hand reflectively, his eyes showing quaintly and quizzically above the glasses and his fingers.
“Well, well! Well, well!” he said, as if he had encountered a difficulty. “It—it will never be possible. He would not marry her,” he added, and then, turning, went abstractedly down the stairs.
Ferrol was in a deep sleep when Christine and her brother entered the chamber. Her face turned still more pale when she saw him, flushed, and became pale again. There were leaden hollows round his eyes, and his hair was matted with perspiration. Yet he was handsome—and helpless. Her eyes filled with tears. She turned her head away from her brother and went softly to the window, but not before she had touched the pale hand that lay nerveless upon the coverlet.
“It’s not feverish,” she said to Nic, as if in necessary explanation of the act.
She stood at the window for a moment, looking out, then said:
“Come here, Nic, and tell me all about it.”