“ ‘Good Lord, Doc!’ I cried, sprinting after him, ‘that’s her husband. And he doesn’t know she’s here.’
“But a lot can happen in a few seconds, and I was just a few seconds too late. As I got to the door I saw Giles in front of me—standing at the entrance to the ward as if he had been turned to stone. A big screen hid the bed from sight—but a screen is not sound proof. He looked at me as I came up, and involuntarily I stopped as I saw his face. And then quite clearly from the room beyond came his wife’s voice.
“ ‘My darling, darling boy!—it’s you and only you for ever and ever!’
“I don’t quite know how much Giles had guessed before. I think he knew about her previous engagement, but I’m quite sure he had never associated Trevor with it. A year or two later she told me that when she married him she had made no attempt to conceal the fact that she had loved another man—and loved him still. And Giles had taken her on those terms. But at the time I didn’t know that: I only knew that a very dear friend’s world had crashed about his head with stunning suddenness. It was Giles who pulled himself together first—Giles, with a face grey and lined, who said in a loud voice to me: ‘Well, Dog-face, where is the invalid?’
“And then he waited a moment or two before he went round the screen.
“ ‘Ah! my dear,’ he said, quite steadily, as he saw his wife, ‘you here?’
“He played his part for ten minutes, stiff-lipped and without a falter; then he went, and his wife went with him to continue the play in which they were billed for life. Trevor’s back was not broken—in a couple of months he was back at duty. And so it might have continued for the duration, but for Giles being drowned fishing in Ireland.”
The Soldier stared thoughtfully at the fire.
“He was a first-class fisherman and a wonderful swimmer, was Giles Yeverley, and sometimes—I wonder. They say he got caught in a bore—that perhaps he got cramp. But, as I say, sometimes—I wonder.
“I saw them—Jimmy Dallas, sometime Sergeant Trevor, and his wife—at the Ritz two nights ago. They seemed wonderfully in love, though they’d been married ten years, and I stopped by their table.