"Oh, yes, you will, when you see him," said Stella; it was all that for a while she could say.
She had always believed that Marian had a deep, but close-locked, nature. Love presumably would be the key.
It was unlocked now. Pain had unlocked it, instead of love, and Stella shivered at the tearless hardness, the sharp, shallow sense of personal privation that occupied Marian's heart. She had not yet thought of Julian.
Stella told herself that Marian's was only the blindness of the unimaginative. The moment Marian saw Julian it would pass, and yield before the directer illumination of the heart. Marian's nature was perhaps one of those that yields very slowly to pain. When she saw Julian she would forget everything else. She would not think of her losses and sacrifices any more, or her duties. Stella felt curiously stung and wasted by Marian's use of the word "duty." Was that all there was for the woman whom Julian loved? Was that all there was for Julian!
But she could deal only with what Marian had; so, when she spoke again, Stella said all she could to comfort Marian. She spoke of Julian's courage; she said no life in Julian could be useless that left his brain free to act. She suggested that he would find a new career for himself, and she pictured his future successes. Beneath her lips and her quick outer mind she thought only of Julian, broken.
They stopped in a large, quiet square, at the door of a private hospital. There was no sound but the half-notes of birds stirring at twilight in the small square garden, and far off the muffled murmur of distant streets.
A nurse opened the door.
"You are Miss Young?" she said to Marian. "Yes, of course, we were expecting you. Sister would like to see you first."
They stood for a moment in a small neat office. The sister rose from an old Dutch bureau, one of the traces of the house's former occupants, and held out her hand to Marian. Her eyes rested with intentness upon the girl's face.
"Sir Julian is almost certain to know you," she said gently, "but you mustn't talk much to him. He has been much weakened by exposure. He lay in a wood for three days without food or water. There is every hope of his partial recovery, Miss Young; but he needs rest and reassurance. We can give him the rest here, but we must look to you to help us to bring back to him the love of life."