"Certainly."
She led the way; and as she walked he noticed that all the lithe grace, all the youth and spring to her step had vanished. She moved wearily; her body under the gray garb was thin; blue veins showed faintly in temple and wrist; only her superb hair and eyes had suffered no change.
Colonel Arran's eyes opened as she stooped at his bedside and laid her lips lightly on his forehead.
"Is there another chair?" he asked wearily.
Ailsa's glance just rested on Berkley, measuring him in expressionless disdain. Then, as he brought another chair, she seated herself.
"You, too, Philip," murmured the wounded man.
Ailsa's violet eyes opened in surprise at the implied intimacy between these men whom she had vaguely understood were anything but friends. But she remained coldly aloof, controlling even a shiver of astonishment when Colonel Arran's hand, which held hers, groped also for Berkley's, and found it.
Then with an effort he turned his head and looked at them.
"I have long known that you loved each other," he whispered. "It is a happiness that God sends me as well as you. If it be His will that I—do not recover, this makes it easy for me. If He wills it that I live, then, in His infinite mercy, He also gives me the reason for living."
Icy cold, Ailsa's hand lay there, limply touching Berkley's; the sick man's eyes were upon them.