She had studied him with attention as he knelt before the fire, noting every detail of his appearance. She now put a question which she had reserved.
"Just how well are you now?"
He looked up. "Don't I look well enough to satisfy you?"
"I can't tell. You are frightfully thin—"
"I never was anything else."
"Do you think this sort of thing is doing as much to make you well as
Doctor Brainard's prescription of a voyage and stay in the South Seas?"
"Much more."
"You must be dreadfully lonely."
He was sitting, Turk fashion, on the hearth-rug before her, his long legs crossed beneath him, his hands clasping his knees. With the firelight playing over his face and touching the thrown-back chestnut locks of his heavy hair with high lights here and there, he looked decidedly boyish. At her suggestion of his probable loneliness he smiled and glanced at Bim.
"Bim," said he, addressing a curled-up mass of rough brown hair from which looked out two watchful brown eyes, and which responded instantly to the name by resolving itself into an approaching dog, "are we ever lonely? Rarely, Sue. As a matter of fact, we have a good many callers, first and last."