For the first time since his arrival at the hospital Eugenia changed from her Red Cross uniform to a dress of which her husband had at one time been especially fond, a smoke-colored chiffon, with lavender and gray tones in it. The dress Captain Castaigne had once said reminded him of the soft colors of the twilight and suggested the peace and happiness which Eugenia’s presence always gave him.
In a chair by the window, with his hand resting upon Duke, Captain Castaigne was sitting, when Eugenia and Richard Thornton went in to him.
The bandage had been removed from his eyes, now covering only the wound over his temple. Again he wore the uniform of a Captain in the army of France.
In returning to his old uniform Eugenia had hoped that it might in some fashion affect her husband’s memory of the past. But Captain Castaigne had made no comment upon putting it on and no one knew whether it had made the slightest impression upon him.
Eugenia entered the room first.
Since her original discover that her husband had no memory of her, Eugenia had never come into his presence without an almost morbid sense of pain and shrinking. Whatever misfortune had befallen him, she still cared for him so deeply, it seemed incredible that he should even desire her society less than he did that of the other people around him. Certainly he preferred Jeanne’s, the little French girl, who had first rescued him, and Mildred Thornton’s, who was now giving him such devoted care.
With the noise of Eugenia’s and Richard Thornton’s approach, Captain Castaigne slowly turned his head. In the past he and Dick had known each other but slightly, yet Eugenia felt she wished some man friend’s opinion of her husband, who was not a physician.
“Gene, where have you been? I have a headache and am lonely. I don’t understand your leaving me so long alone,” Captain Castaigne began in an injured tone, as Eugenia walked toward him.
She thought that he had mistaken her for little Jeanne, whom he never forgot and was never weary of seeing. Frequently when Jeanne did not appear at the hospital at the hour he desired her, Captain Castaigne became annoyed and disappointed.
“It is late, Jeanne will be here tomorrow. But I brought a friend who wishes to talk to you, Henri,” Eugenia answered quietly, yet not looking at her husband, because of the tears which had suddenly blinded her eyes.