"Have you not enough upon your hands already? Too much, I have sometimes feared."
"Only the Hospice and the Schools," she answered eagerly, "and the Training Houses for the elder women. And, thanks to you, these are excellently staffed. If I were to die it would make little difference. Things would go on just the same."
"Would they?"
She stooped, lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it. He looked at her keenly as she did so, and the over-bright flush upon the thin cheeks and the hollows about the beautiful eyes, like the burning touch of her hand and of her lips, told him their tale of woe.
"Not for you. Nothing would ever be the same for you or for Bawne. Therefore—give me more work."
"There is plenty of work, unhappily," he said, "because of this calamity that has fallen upon the nation. We have notice that a hundred wounded men from the Front—many of them cot-cases—will arrive at SS. Stanislaus and Theresa's at three this afternoon."
"I shall be there!"
"I am not going to try to dissuade you. I will not keep back what God has given to me from those who have given so much for England. There is another quarter where you will be of use." His eyes were on the triptych frame before him. "I speak of that little Lady Norwater—Patrine's friend—I think you have not met?"
"Oh, but I have. We were made acquainted with each other some weeks ago at the Club." Her delicate face contracted. "That day when the news came about the British losses. Just before that poor child Brenda Helvellyn blurted out the dreadful truth. Owen, it was tragic. She had known it from the beginning——"
"And the sister forbade her to breathe a hint of it. That is the attitude of the fashionable Sadducean," said Saxham bitterly, "who not only denies the Atonement and the Resurrection, but will not admit of Death."