“It is not fair to you —”
“That is for me to say. Don't argue with me. Don't waste your strength. You belong to me, and you have no right to leave me, to deprive me of your love. I don't care what you say, I don't want to hear it — I want you. Whatever there is of you that the doctors can save — that much is mine, and you must not take it from me. You can live only if you try to, and I ask you to do that. I want your promise. I want you to say it and mean it. I have to go out and make arrangements to take you to Paris; but I can't go till I know that you will fight, and not give up. You told me to have courage, Marcel. Now I have it, and you have to repay me. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“I want your promise. I want to know that if I go out to get help, you will fight with everything that's in you to keep alive, to keep your hope and courage, for my sake, and for our love. There's no use talking about love if you're not willing to do that much for it. Answer me that you will.”
She put her ear to the opening again, and heard a whisper: “All right.” She touched him gently on the shoulder, not knowing what part of him might be a wound, and said: “Wait for me. I'll come back just as quickly as I can make arrangements. Anything else I can do?”
“Water,” he said. She didn't know how to give it to him, for she was afraid to lift his head, and she had no tube, and no one to ask. She dipped her handkerchief into a glass and squeezed a little into his mouth, and kept that up until he said it was enough.
III
The doctors made no objection to having a patient taken off their hands. They said he couldn't be crowded into an automobile, that would surely kill him; and there was no ambulance available. It was a question of making changes in Beauty's own car, one of the new and fashionable kind called a “limousine,” a square black box. It might be possible to take out two of the seats, the right-hand ones, and make a place to lay a narrow mattress on the floor. Then Jerry made a suggestion — why not put a board platform on top of the two seats, with a mattress on that?
They drove to a garage; there was nobody but the wife of the proprietor and an elderly mechanic, both greatly startled by the idea of cutting out a piece of the back of a luxury car, so that a wounded soldier could be slid into it. The windshield was large, and the mechanic thought he might be able to remove that. Beauty said: “Break it if necessary. We can have it replaced in Paris.” Jerry took the proprietress aside and spoke magic words: “C'est I'ami de cette belle dame.”
“Ah, c'est I'amour!” That explained everything, and they went to work with enthusiasm. Love will find out the way! They managed to get the windshield off without too great harm, and they put some boards together and made a platform, and the proprietress brought an old mattress, and Lanny worked at it with his pocket knife, cutting it down to the right size. “Ah, ces Américains!”