'Indeed. And you love him still?'
'He is dead—he is dead—and perhaps it is a sin to brood over the past.'
'An infernal futility, at all events. All this is pleasant for me, madam,' said he, applying himself to polishing his pate again.
A wiser man might have partly ignored the affair, in the hope that it must in time pass away; but her unmistakable emotion of grief for Cameron's death proved somewhat beyond the patience of Sir Paget, who recurred to it warmly.
'His demise, if untimely, is very natural; to face death and meet it was the trade he chose, and for which the country paid him, and well, too, as we shall find by next year's income-tax. What more would you have? Others quite as good as he—better perhaps—have fallen in this grotesque war, which, the Ministry tell us, is no war at all, though it will be deuced expensive work to us who have to stump-up for it,' he continued, waving his hand as he had done when addressing the same words to his constituents at Slough-cum-Sloggit. 'Moreover, madam, we can only die once, which is just as well. Who is it that likens the race of man to leaves on the trees?'
'But the leaves fall in autumn, not as he has done—my—my——'
'Love?' he suggested, with a gloomy sneer.
'No,' replied Eveline, quivering with anger.
'What then, madam?'
'My dear friend—my brother's comrade, and the saver of his life at Tel-el-Kebir.'