On her arrival at Waterloo she telephoned to George Oakley and invited him to lunch with her. He, if any one, would have news, he was fond of her; and, ever since Sonia's engagement, she had felt that something was wanting until she commanded an equal devotion and gave an equal surrender. Of her, too, people were saying that she had no heart; she was ready and more than ready to fall in love.
"My child, you do look a little wreck," George exclaimed, when she called for him at the Admiralty. "This is a sad business about Jim. I was very sorry for you all."
"You don't think there's any hope?"
"I tell his mother and sister that he's sure to turn up. If you ask me whether I believe what I say.... It is a holocaust and a half! O'Rane, Jim, Tom Dainton, Summertown—Lady Maitland's eldest boy is back wounded. And with the rest you feel it's only a question of time. Val Arden lunched with me three days before he was killed, and I felt that he wanted to be killed. The thing had got on his nerves till he knew he couldn't stand much more of it without going out of his mind. Other people, again, seem to take the war like a game of rather irregular football." He hesitated and then tried to go on without allowing a change to come into his voice. "Jack Waring came to see me last week, and I'd swear that he was enjoying the whole thing."
Barbara's pulses hammered at sound of the name, and she dreaded to seem too nonchalant.
"How was he?" she asked, though it was rather of Val Arden that she was thinking. Perhaps Jack, too, welcomed the chance of having everything ended for him. She remembered that his eyes had suddenly shone, when George came, grave-faced, into the banqueting-hall; he was making plans for taking a commission three days before war was declared and three minutes after he left her. It was in truth a new emotion to feel that she might have driven him to constructive suicide....
"Positively keen to get back," said George. "Didn't...?" He was going to ask, in some surprise, whether she had not seen him; the ball at Chepstow seemed to have healed any breach between them. But it was not his business. "Your mother tells me that your hospital is being closed," he substituted.
"Closed?" Barbara echoed in dismay.
"The War Office finds it difficult to work."
"But mother never told me! Oh, George! that's too awful! I can't get on without it. I must have something to keep me busy. If I start thinking——"