“I saw you go in,” she said, “so I waited for you.”
“Oh, my dear,” I cried, “you should have been in Boulogne by now. What madness brought you here?”
“They know me here and they’ve taken me on. You couldn’t expect me to stay behind. You said yourself everybody was wanted, and I’m in a Service like you. Please don’t be angry, Dick.”
I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t even extra anxious. The whole thing seemed to have been planned by fate since the creation of the world. The game we had been engaged in wasn’t finished and it was right that we should play it out together. With that feeling came a conviction, too, of ultimate victory. Somehow or sometime we should get to the end of our pilgrimage. But I remembered Mary’s forebodings about the sacrifice required. The best of us. That ruled me out, but what about her?
I caught her to my arms. “Goodbye, my very dearest. Don’t worry about me, for mine’s a soft job and I can look after my skin. But oh! take care of yourself, for you are all the world to me.”
She kissed me gravely like a wise child.
“I am not afraid for you,” she said. “You are going to stand in the breach, and I know—I know you will win. Remember that there is someone here whose heart is so full of pride of her man that it hasn’t room for fear.”
As I went out of the convent door I felt that once again I had been given my orders.
It did not surprise me that, when I sought out my room on an upper floor of the Hôtel de France, I found Blenkiron in the corridor. He was in the best of spirits.
“You can’t keep me out of the show, Dick,” he said, “so you needn’t start arguing. Why, this is the one original chance of a lifetime for John S. Blenkiron. Our little fight at Erzerum was only a side-show, but this is a real high-class Armageddon. I guess I’ll find a way to make myself useful.”