The Duke saw my emotion and read my silence aright. "Well," he said. "Are you satisfied?"
I told him that if I were not I must be the veriest ingrate living.
"And you have nothing more to ask?" he continued, still smiling.
"Nothing," I said. "Except--except that which it is not in your lordship's power to grant."
"How?" said he, with a show of surprise and resentment. "Not satisfied yet? What is it?"
"If she were here!" I said. "If she were here, my lord! But Dunquerque----"
"Is a far cry, eh! And the roads are bad. And the seas----"
"Are worse," I said gloomily, looking at the paper as Tantalus looked at the water. "And to get word to her is not of the easiest."
"No," the Duke said. "Say you so? Then what do you make of this, faint-heart?" And he pointed through the open window.