"Why, Derek," she said, "I was just thinking of you."
Vane, his right arm tightly bound in a sling, sat down beside her.
"I thought you looked pretty weary," he laughed. "Jove! but it's great seeing you again, Margaret . . .! And the peace of it all." He waved his left hand round the deserted beach. "Why, it's like old times—before the world went mad" . . . He fumbled with his cigarette case, until she took it out of his hand, and struck a match for him.
"What ward are you in?" she asked, when he had made himself comfortable.
"Number 13; got here yesterday."
"I come on night duty there to-night. What's your trouble?"
"Machine-gun," he answered briefly. "A nice clean one through the shoulder. And the man beside me took the next bullet through his heart." He laughed shortly. "What a gamble—what a dam silly gamble, isn't it?"
She looked thoughtfully out to sea. The train of ideas his sudden appearance had interrupted was still half consciously occupying her mind.
"Four years, isn't it, since we met?" she said after a while.
"Four centuries, you mean. Four wasted centuries. Nothing will ever be the same again."