John put his arm about Paul's shoulders.
“Forgive me, brother. I was mad to talk to you like that—I who sent you out on that cruel night and staid at home myself. You did what you could——”
“You think that—really?”
“Yes, only at the moment it seemed as if we had changed places somehow, and it was I who had lost a sister and been out to find her, and given up the search too soon, and come home empty and useless and broken-spirited, and——”
Paul was looking up at him with a face full of astonishment.
“Do you really think I did all I could to find her—the nurse, I mean?”
But John had turned his own face away, and there was no answer. Paul tried to say something, but he could not find the words. At last in a choked voice he murmured: “We must keep close together, brother; we are in the same boat now.”
And feeling for John's hand, he took it and held it, and they sat for some minutes with bowed heads, as if a ghost were going by.
“There's nothing but prayer and penance and fasting left to us, is there?”
Still John made no reply, and the broken creature began to comfort him.