Hamilton suddenly remembered where he had heard that phrase. The memory gave him a queer shock. It seemed as though he had suddenly intruded upon something. And yet, she had said that McCall had not called on her before returning home.
“Where did you hear that?” she asked. “I picked it up somewhere in Paris, in the hospital.”
“I don’t remember,” he replied.
They had reached the street and a bus was approaching. Dorothy held out her hand.
“We shall always be friends, I hope.” Were her eyes a bit wistful?
“Yes, friends.”
She was climbing into the bus, her face flushed, little ends of brown hair blowing free from under her turban. Hamilton remembered their last leave-taking in the Luxembourg gardens. Through the window he caught a glimpse of her walking forward to a seat, smiling as he had seen her smiling in the hospital, when caring for the wounded.
He wondered if there were tears on her lashes.
XVIII
When Hamilton looked out of the window of his Pullman the next morning he noticed that the earth was red. He had left the land of dark earth, the cities of gray streets and walks. He had left the cold North and was back home in the South. The hills, rolling in every direction to the slowly rotating horizon, were covered with greenery, and a warmer, more golden sunshine brightened it. It seemed, too, that the sky was bluer. And, peeping out from between the trees and shrubs and running along the roads and ditches—red earth.