She looked up at him, studying his face intently. It had always been a remarkably fine face, and on it the suffering of the past year had done a certain work which added to its beauty. He did not look ill, but the refinement which illness sometimes lends to faces of a somewhat too strongly cut type had softened it into an exceeding charm. Out of it the eyes shone with an undaunted spirit which told of hidden fires.
"I am glad a share in the wreckage falls to me," she said softly.
"Nan," he told her, while his lips broke irresistibly into a smile again, "I believe you are deliberately trying to burn a sweet incense before me to-night. Just how fragrant it is to a fellow in my shape I can't tell you. You would never do it if I were on my feet, I appreciate that; but I'm very grateful just the same."
"I'd like," she said with eyes which fell now to the hands folded in her lap—and the droop of her head as he saw it, with the turned-away profile cut like an exquisite silhouette against the fire, was burnt into his memory afterward—"to have you remember this Christmas Eve—as I shall."
"Remember it!"
"Shall you?"
"Shall I!"
"Ah—who is deliberately trying to say nice things now?" But she said it rather faintly.
He lay back among his pillows with a long breath. "So you go to-morrow morning?"
"Early—at six o'clock. You will not see me. And I must go now. See, it is after eleven. Think of their making me go out this evening when I must be up at five and travel the next forty-eight hours. On Christmas Day, too. Isn't that too bad? But that's the price of my staying over to spend Christmas Eve with Jerry Fullerton—like the foolish girl that I am."