“We are two lonesome bodies, are n’t we?” she added.
“We ’ll do our best to comfort each other,” said Joyce.
The visiting hour was nearly at an end, and the ward was growing silent again. The sister came down the aisle and stood by Yvonne’s bed and smoothed her pillows.
“You have had quite enough talking for one day,” she said pleasantly. “It has given you quite a colour—but we mustn’t overdo it.”
Joyce rose to take his leave.
“I may come again, the next time?” he asked.
“Would you?” said Yvonne, with an eager look.
“I would come to-morrow—every day, if they would let me,” he said with conviction.
He shook hands with her and walked away. At the end of the ward he turned, looked back and saw the mass of black against the white pillow and the specks of crimson that showed Yvonne. He hated leaving her among strangers and the rough comforts of an open ward in a hospital. An odd feeling of personal responsibility was mingled with his resentment against the freaks of fortune—an irrational sense of mean-spiritedness in letting her lie there.
He went back to his work, cheered and strengthened within; but his outlook on life was darkened by one more shadow of the inexorable cruelty of fate. That he should have suffered—well and good. It was a penalty he was paying. But Yvonne, the sweetest, innocentest soul alive—why should her head be brought low? And thus the pages that he wrote grew darker by the shadow.