He obeyed me as he had obeyed me when he was a child. I heard a great noise of shutting doors and drawers and box lids, and when I went in, exactly at the end of the ten minutes, he was lying between the sheets, luxuriously stretched out.
"Oh, the joy of being in a real bed again! I expect I shall sleep till eleven or twelve o'clock to-morrow. Then I shall have the rest of the day with you and shall go up to town and meet Vera Brennan next day; that is, if she can come up from her home. I want to buy a dagger, too, for hand-to-hand work in the trenches, and a few other things."
"Oughtn't you to have sent Vera a telegram to-night?"
"No. To-morrow will do. Oh, by the way, Big Yeogh Wough, have you got any new clothes to show me?"
"No." I laughed as I shook my head. "I couldn't have afforded them now in war time, even if I'd wanted them—and I haven't felt I wanted them with you away and in danger."
He drew my hand into his, and I stayed beside him with my head resting on his pillow, until he had fallen into a heavy sleep.
How boyish his face looked as he slept! and as I drew my hand from his and moved away from his bedside, turning off the electric light and leaving him in a full flood of August moon radiance, I could have fancied that I heard voices singing softly in the air around me:
"They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old"—
I stole back and kissed his hair. Oh, human love! why must it be always pain—pain—pain?
He was his old bright self again next day, when, having walked with us all, he lay across my bed and laughed as he read me little French fairy stories while I put things straight in the room.