At last Geoffrey was pronounced well, and yet the girl had not consented. He had no excuse for remaining longer, so with evident bad humour he consented to go.
“Miss Young,” he said, “I’m going home to-day, and I just won’t leave you here for some dirty ‘Dago’ to be grabbing at your hand and proposing to you all the time. Marry me and come away from here.”
“Geoffrey, I’m going to give you a square deal. You go home for a month, see other girls, and if you then still want to marry me, come up here and I’ll think about it.”
“I’m on, Miss Young. Say, I’ve found out your first name. It’s Claire, isn’t it? You know I used to think ‘Diana’ was a peach of a name, but ‘Claire’ beats it a mile.”
Geoffrey went home. Miss Young cried a little in the solitude of her room. Then she settled down to a half-hopeful vigil of waiting. During the first two weeks she received seven letters, each one declaring Geoffrey’s undying devotion and his firm desire to return for her. Every night she read the entire collection up to date, and wept over them, as is the manner of women beloved. Then for days she received no word. She fought this rather hopeless portent with trusting heart.
Often during the long day’s work when patients grumbled, when some ogling male became amorously persistent, when the little nurse found herself almost hating mankind, she slipped into the vacant corridor and reread one of the treasured epistles to give her faith.
The third week dragged along and the beginning of the fourth, and still she received not a word. At first she waited impatiently for each day’s mail, but finally she began to delay her call at the desk, dreading the recurrent disappointment.
At last one morning at breakfast she received a letter addressed in Geoffrey’s handwriting. All aflutter she slipped it into her pocket until she could be alone. But she couldn’t wait, so she tremulously tore the envelope open and read:
“My Dear Miss Young:
“I shall always regard you as a woman of the rarest good sense. You must have thought me a great fool. I think a man is hardly responsible for what he does when he is sick. I must thank you for your splendid nursing, and, furthermore, for the way in which you brought me to my senses. You see, Diana and I have made it all up again. I’m sending you a card.”