And, faint as a little echo, far away:
All's well!
And silence is the rhetoric of lovers. Why should it matter? What difference could it make? Why should the innocent passions of good beasts be interdict for men?
The women were being loaded into their special sleighs when Sarde first missed his wife. With growing anxiety he visited every place where she could be, asked questions and heard rough laughter the moment his back was turned. He found that Mrs. Sarde had crossed toward the gate-house at nine o'clock, carrying a large bundle. He failed to notice a bright and growing light which flickered in the surgery window above the guard-room; but pressed on through the covered way, and asked impatient questions of the sentry who answered him in gibberish about a waggy, a mutt and a whiffle-swoggle. Yes, Mrs. Sarde had passed hours ago with a bundle and a gold-topped umbrella, turning off sharply to the left.
So for the second time poor Sarde found his pretty mistress in my arms. He stood beside us unnoticed and there was a quivering agony of shame in his first words, "Oh, don't mind me."
We leaped apart. The woman nipped round the corner screaming. The powerful impulse of a soldier's self-respect compelled me to stand to attention, forced me to salute that long thin fool, poor Sarde.
"You?" he said in a husky whisper, "You!"
"That's me."
"Give me the 'Sir', confound you!"
"Why, dammit, I nearly did!" The impulse to obey was almost overwhelming, yet only by pressing a quarrel could I compel him to release the woman.