"It is common property, old man," he said. "They told me I should be nursed in this ward by a man who owned a delicatessen business in New York. Is it not so?"
Jacob wagged his head. "Ach; it is a wonder how gossip gets around this hospital," he grumbled.
Sanderson lay silent but wakeful. Indeed, now that he had come completely to himself and the ether fumes were out of his brain he suffered too much pain in his broken shoulder to sleep. And his mind was very active.
What troubled him the most was the association of Belinda and the Prussian surgeon in this field hospital. It was a mystery that fed his old jealousy of the Herr Doktor.
Just now his peril, as an enemy found in disguise within the German lines, did not greatly oppress him. There was something in connection with his situation, however, that keenly stabbed his mind and was uppermost in it when Belinda returned.
He saw her coming down the ward. The light in her eyes could be for nobody but him—the trembling smile upon her sweet lips drove all jealous thoughts away. She could not have turned from the surgeon to him with this look on her face if her affection was given to the black-browed Prussian.
"Frank!" she breathed, kneeling quickly beside him that her lips might be close to his ear. She took his good hand in her own. The aviator's heart was for the moment too full for him to utter an intelligible word, but his eyes spoke his thoughts.
"Frank," she went on, "I must not be caught speaking to you—especially in English. You can only be one of my Verwundete, my poor boy! Oh, if you had been killed! And I watched you fall without knowing!" She tried to turn her eyes away, but his gaze held her.
"Belinda!"
"Hush! I must appear German. So must you. My cousins, Carl and Paul, are here. They have saved me from any questioning thus far. But now that Doctor Herschall knows——"