. . .Though, in another sense, perhaps the deeper, it’s I who am in hers. She takes such wonderful, such devoted care of me.”

“I see.” Captain Saltonhall was feeling for his cigarette-case. “It’s lucky you are so much attached to each other.—Do you mind?—Will you have one?”

“Please.”

He was preparing to hoist himself out of his chair with the cigarette-case and matchbox, but she sprang up and came to him. “You can’t give yourself these luxuries of convention,” she smiled, rather as if at an unruly patient. “You must let me wait on you, rather. At all events, till you get more used to it. Dear old Bevis. You’re so brave that one forgets all about it.”

She leaned over him, while he gave her a light, and then, the match having gone out in his rather unsteady fingers, leaned still nearer to light his cigarette from hers. But, gently, he laid his. . . Read More