Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/212

 It was indeed a queer life, and not the least queer thing about it was her relationship to Tom, and his to her. This long youth alternately lying back on his pillows and refined by pain into gentleness, or cursing the surgeon half humorously and half in earnest when he dressed his leg, was a stranger to her. Sometimes he caught her staring at him, and a gulf of self-consciousness opened between them. He would try to bridge it.

"Come on over here, girl, What're you thinking about?"

"Nothing. It seems so queer, doesn't it?"

"It seems pretty fine to me; the finest thing that ever happened."

"Getting hurt?"

"Now that's not like you, girl. Loving you and getting you. You're mine. Don't forget that."

She had managed to keep the papers from him, and he knew nothing of Herbert, or of the scandal. But once he startled her by asking about Herbert. His hands, calloused and hard, had begun to peel, and he eyed them ruefully.

"Nice hands for a real he-man!" he said scornfully. "They'll soon be as soft and white as Percy's!" He looked up at her. "What's became of lil' old Percy anyhow? He'd have made a fine girl, he would!"

"I suppose he's all right."

"It wouldn't surprise me to learn that he chewed a finger nail plumb off when he heard the news," he drawled.

It had never occurred to him that his injury was a permanent one. As he improved he began to make plans. He had saved some money, enough to get them back home, and he wasn't afraid after that. He could always take care of her; not the way she'd been used to, but he was strong and he wasn't afraid to work.

"You stick to me, girl, and I'll amount to something yet."

"I'll always stick, Tom."

She could not tell him. She would listen to his plans with a sort of terror for the time when he would have to know, and her hands would grow cold in his, and sometimes the nurse, overhearing, would look at her and shake her head. . ..