"You were a soldier!"
"And a very poor one!" he added.
"And they called you 'Fighting d'Arcy!'" said she, looking into the grey eyes she had been wont to think almost too gentle.
"That sounds strange—on your lips," said he with his grave smile, "I perceive the Sergeant has been talking."
"He has been boasting to me of all your wounds, sir!" The Major laughed. "He is greatly proud of you, sir."
"He saved my life more than once."
"You must have been a very desperate soldier to have been wounded so very often, Major John!"
"Why you see, at that time," he answered, handing her down the steps into the garden, "I wished to die."
"To die?" she repeated. "O, prithee why?"
"This was twenty years ago, I was a boy then," he sighed. "To-day I am——"