She bent and kissed his hand. "Oh, Tris, if we could only go away from here—from Gaya—somewhere where we should get away from everyone-everyone who makes me afraid—couldn't we? We could start afresh with no one to come between us——?"
It had grown very dark. Though she was watching him again, she could not read his expression. And he was looking past her, straight into the vision which she had called up before him. But it was a vision of all that had been. He saw the old landmarks—the river and the long, broken roads, the camping-place beneath the trees, the familiar faces whose solemn trustfulness he had fought for with his best years, with all the ardour of his youth. He saw the dreams he had dreamed—the hours tight packed with action, with all the glory of battle and victory. And now to begin again—to cut new paths through the waste tracts, to call up fresh springs of faith and hope from desert ground. He felt himself suddenly old and very tired.
"It should be easy enough," he said gently. "I could get a new district—I'm not popular and they've just left me here—but they'd do that for me, I daresay. Yes, we will go away and start again, Anne."
She was silent for a moment. She was breathing quietly and contentedly. In a flash of knowledge which he despised and hated, he knew that they had fought together and that she had won.
"You're so good, Tris, so good to me. Sometimes we don't quite understand each other. But we're husband and wife, and that's all that really matters, isn't it?"
He nodded. The tiredness stupefied him, bewildered him. He fancied he saw something white glide in among the trees—a slender figure that moved like a very spirit of Life. He fancied there was music in the stillness—afar off, intoxicating.
"All that matters, Anne——"
CHAPTER III
MRS. BOUCICAULT CALLS THE TUNE
The male-nurse had put the carefully shaded lamp on the table behind the bed and gone off to take an unobtrusive share in the festivities. Colonel Armstrong had lent the regimental band for the occasion, and what with the music and the superabundance of champagne and the pliability of the native character, the male-nurse recognized golden opportunities for a break in the tedium of his duties. Possibly he was quite justified. It was a dull business nursing a patient who could not even curse at you. Moreover, there was nothing to do. What could be done for a log that lay day in, day out, staring sightlessly up at the white ceiling, whose every desire, if desire still lived behind that appalling silence, had to be guessed at?