Moya smiled. “Once we were serious—ages ago. Do you remember?”
“Do I remember!”
“Well? You are you, and I am I, still.”
“Yes; and as full of fateful surprises for each other.”
“I bar 'fateful'! That word has the true taint of morbidness.”
“But you can't 'bar' fate. Listen: this is a supposing, you know. Suppose that an accident had happened to our leader on the way home—to your Lieutenant Winslow, we'll say”—
“My lieutenant!”
“Your father's—the regiment's—Lieutenant Winslow 'of ours.' Suppose we had brought him back in a state to need a surgeon's help; and without a word to any one he should get up and walk out of the hospital with his hurts not healed, and no one knew why, or where he had gone? There would be a stir about it, would there not? And if such a poor spectre of a bridegroom as I were allowed to join the search, no one would think it strange, or call it a slight to his bride if the fellow went?”
“I take your case,” said Moya with a beaming look. “You want to go after that poor man who suffered with you.”
“Who went with us to save us from our own headstrong folly, and would have died there alone”—