'Would it not possible be,' he asked, 'for me your father to see?'
'No. That is quite impossible. But I thank you for thinking of doing so.'
'But if you tell him that to the Red Cross,—that splendid, so-entirely-neutral and internationally-universal institution—I too belong? Surely would he then consent me to see?'
She shook her head. 'The truth is that—that——' She stopped, and he said 'Yes?' interrogatively, encouragingly. 'The truth is that my poor father had a most unfortunate experience with some German Red Cross doctors!'
'With German doctors,' he repeated, discomfited. 'That very strange is.'
'Yes, it was strange—strange and most unfortunate, as matters now are; for it makes me feel that I do not dare propose your visit to him.'
The Herr Doktor—or so it seemed to the girl standing by his side—fell into an abstracted silence. She respected his mood for a few moments, then she asked timidly, in a voice very different from that which he had ever heard issue from her proud lips before, 'I suppose your medical stores are at the Tournebride?'
He looked round eagerly. 'No,' he said quickly. 'I have them here, in the motor ambulance, and what necessary is, go I at once to procure. But, gracious miss! There has come to me a thought which I find most illuminating, a thought which I you earnestly beg very carefully before you it reject to consider. With my medical stores possess I naturally operation overalls.'
He stopped for a moment, as if anxious to give himself time, then went on hurriedly: 'Would it not possible be for me to put on an overall (it covers entirely my 'feld-grau' uniform) and then an English doctor to represent by the bedside of your honoured father? He surely would not object an English or, better still, a Scotch colleague to see?'
'That,' she said, and drew a long breath, 'is very true.'