“Attack of fever. I left him fairly comfortable.”
“And he won’t let me go near him, of course?”
“How did you know?” he asked in surprise.
“I know him. I suppose he has made you promise, Maurice? Don’t be afraid; I am not going to make a fuss—only you must tell me if he is dying.”
“I hope there’s no fear of that. If there was——”
“If there is, you must let me know, and I shall go to him. Even he would not wish to keep me away then—he would forgive me at last. Do you remember, Maurice?—‘an unforgiving brute,’ you called him once.” She laughed drearily. “But he wouldn’t deprive me of that one little scrap of comfort when there was no chance of my presuming upon it in the future.”
“Then you think”—Maurice hesitated—“that he cares for you still?”
“I know he does. But he can’t forgive me.”
“I don’t know—I had an idea somehow that it was you. Eirene thought you didn’t care for him.”
“Eirene ought to know better,” said Zoe indignantly. “But she really thinks you don’t care for a person unless you show it by doing something wild, I suppose. Maurice, if I had married him seven years ago, do you think we should have been saved all this?” with a wave of her hand that included the peninsula generally. “He would have been quartered somewhere in Egypt or India, I suppose, and he would be an ordinary hard-working soldier, and I the usual Anglo-Indian regimental lady. You would not have embarked on this without him?”