’I—­I don’t’——­

’The Americans and the English, I mean.  Relatives always go to each others’ funerals, so I thought I might stretch a point and take in the hospital.’

‘Oh!  That was all?’

’Goodness, no!  You automatically became a protege of mine when I picked you up last night.  Isn’t that a horrid expression?—­but frightfully fashionable these unmoral days.’

‘You must excuse me,’ he said slowly, ’but I was foolish enough to think you came here because—­well, because you wanted to.’

’So I did.  An air-raid casualty is ever so much more romantic than a wounded soldier.  If he lives through it, he always proposes the very next day either to the nurse or to the ambulance-driver, whereas a Tommy, after his third wound, becomes so blase.’

‘You shouldn’t torture me,’ he said, wincing noticeably under the incision of her words.

Just for a fleeting instant her eyes were softened with a tender look of self-reproach.  His heart warmed at the sight, but before he could convince himself that it was not a creation of his own fancy, it had passed, and once more she was holding him at bay with her impersonal abruptness.

‘Will you tell me about yourself?’ he urged.  ‘Please.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Everything—­everything!’ he blurted out, impetuously leaning forward.  ’My heavens!  Don’t you know how I’ve longed and waited for this moment ever since that night at your flat?  I want to hear all about you—­what you’ve done, where you’ve been, and—­and in what mysterious way you’ve changed.’

‘Have I changed?’

’Of course you have.  You’re trying to appear just as you were when we first met, but you can’t do it.  Even if I hadn’t noticed the difference in you, I should have known that no one could live through these times and remain the same.’

‘Why not?  Haven’t you?’

He laughed grimly, and his head sank back on the pillows.  ’I want to know all about you, Elise,’ he repeated dully.

‘Very well.’  She smoothed her skirt with her hands, and folded them Quakeress-fashion.

’As you know, I once had a flat in Park Walk—­which I shared with various and variegated female patriots, also engaged in guiding the destinies of motor-cars.  Edna was the first one to follow Marian, after she and I quarrelled; but Edna couldn’t break herself of the habit of wandering into the Ritz for luncheon every second day with only a shilling in her pocket.’

’But I don’t see how’——­

’You poor innocent!  Some one always paid—­don’t worry.  So we parted company on that issue, and I asked Mabel to take Edna’s place.  Mabel was frightfully nice, but took to opium cigarettes, and then to heroin.  She disappeared one night, and never came back.  Poor girl!  Her going made room for Lily, who read the very nicest modern novels, and always cried through the love scenes.  I wish you could have seen her sitting up in bed reading a book, eating chocolates, and sobbing like a crocodile.  Lily had only one weakness—­marrying Flying Corps officers.  It was really the army’s fault giving two of her husbands leave at the same time.’