“It is you,” said Robert Black, after a moment, while he still held Jane’s hand. “I can’t quite believe it—but it is you. Will you mind if I look at you very hard, for a little, to make myself sure?”
“I’m not so sure it is you,” Jane said. She couldn’t quite return that eager gaze, but she could take stock of his appearance, none the less, as a woman may. “You must have been through very, very much.”
“Not more than you. You are not changed at all, in one way; but in another way—you are. It is the change that I expected, but—it takes hold of me, just the same. You have seen—what you have seen.”
“Yes. And you have done—what you have done,” she answered.
“We have very much to tell each other, haven’t we? And so little time, at the longest, to tell it in—till we meet back home. I’m sorry to be going first, again, but I have no choice. I wanted to wait for my regiment, but—I suspect Red’s friend Doctor Leaver of having a hand in these rigid orders to get out of the country.”
“Aren’t the wounds doing well?” she asked him, with the nurse’s straightforwardness which was so natural to her now.
“The wounds are all right, but they left a bit of trouble behind. It’s nothing—only a matter of time. The sea voyage alone will undoubtedly work wonders. Have you any idea when you will be coming?”
“Within a month or two, I imagine.”
“Really?” His eyes lighted. “But—Jane—I can’t wait even till then to hear all that you can tell me of yourself.”
“Come and sit down. And—may I give you tea?”