It was a few days before Joe Sidney was allowed to see Barbara. The news of her friend’s death had been broken to her by the doctor, and though her grief was profound she bore the shock better than they had feared likely, and continued to make good progress towards recovery.
It was on the day following that on which she learnt the truth, or rather a bowdlerised version of it, that Sidney refused to be longer denied, and practically forced his way into the private room at the hospital to which she had been moved.
At sight of her sad, tear-stained face, framed in bandages, and wearing such a different aspect from when he had last looked on it, the little speech he had prepared to greet her with died on his lips, and he could only take her hand in silence and gaze at her without a word till the door had shut behind the nurse, who, dearly as she would have liked to remain, was luckily prevented from doing so by an urgent summons to attend on the house surgeon elsewhere.
“Oh, my dear, I thought you were dead,” he stammered.
She was very weak still, and while the tenderness in his voice, still more than the words themselves, brought a feeble little smile of the purest content to play a moment round the corners of her mouth, they also caused the blood to rush to her face in a hot, embarrassing wave, so that she turned her head away, and lay facing the wall with no conscious wish except to hide from him.
Then the flush died away, leaving her very white and still and silent, with eyes tightly shut. She knew that if she opened them or tried to speak she would not be able to help crying.
Sidney did not understand her stillness. A dreadful fear came upon him that she had fainted, and he looked round for the bell. It was just out of reach; but, when he tried to withdraw the hand which still held hers, her clasp gently tightened on it, and would not let him go.
With a muffled exclamation he fell on his knees beside the pillow.
“Barbara, Barbara,” he cried, “will you always go hand in hand with me now?”
And with face still averted she murmured: “Always, always!”