"Jenny, it can't be true that they did that to Belgium? Those funny, quiet, stingy people!" And his soldierly knowledge was as deeply buried as this memory of that awful August. While her spell endured they could not send him back into the hell of war. This wonderful, kind woman held his body as safely as she held his soul.
I was so grateful that I was forced to go and sit down on the rug beside her. It was an intrusion, but I wanted to be near her. She did not look surprised when she turned to me her puckered brows, but smiled through the ugly fringe of vagrant hairs the weather had plucked from under the hard rim of her hat. It was part of her loveliness that even if she did not understand an act she could accept it.
Presently she leaned over to me across his body and whispered:
"He's not cold. I put the overcoat on him as soon as he was fairly off. I've just felt his hands, and they're as warm as toast." If I had whispered like that I would have wakened him.
Soon he stirred, groped for her hand, and lay with his cheek against the rough palm. He was awake, but liked to lie so.
In a little she shook her hand away and said:
"Get up and run along to the house and have some hot tea. You'll catch your death lying out here."
He caught her hand again. It was evident that for some reason the moment was charged with ecstasy for them both.
It seemed as though there was a softer air in this small clearing than anywhere else in the world. I stood up, with my back against a birch and said negligently, knowing now that nothing could really threaten them:
"There is a doctor coming at half-past four who wants to see you both."