Sometimes now, when he coughed, he wondered whether the surgeon had succeeded in extracting quite all the bits of shrapnel.
Ferlie, in those days, had not even attained the dignity of flapperdom. Too small for khaki-worship. And it was during those years, he had heard, that Muriel began to lose her silver-fair head. He remembered his one last futile attempt to win her before returning to Burma. His hand, the forefinger stained with ink, stretched irresolutely towards the telephone. As if in direct answer to the impulse a bell rang. The electric bell of his flat. Curious. The valet of his rooms used a latch-key, discreetly, when the flat's occupant was out, and had already taken his dinner order. The hand-lift would do the remaining work of the evening in bringing up the meal and taking it down.
He crossed the room and switched on the crimson-shaded lamp in the lobby. The dim silhouette of a feminine figure was outlined on the frosted glass of the staircase door. He slipped back the catch.
She stood in the frame of the dark fluted doorway.
White fox furs at her throat, fresh violets nestling in them from some country hot-house; above, the hair of a Beata Beatrix escaped from under her soft grey suede travelling hat.
So this was Ferlie. Ferlie, whose letters had grown mature.
"How long do we have to stand here and look at one another, Cyprian?"
The tremulous laughter of her greeting broke the spell.
Cyprian, blinking in the red lamp-light, was beginning to believe her an apparition. He stood aside to let her pass and slipped back the travelling wrap from her shoulders with hands which were not quite steady.
"I did not think you would be coming so late as this," he said. "You never rang up, Ferlie."