Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/17

Rh been as yet no cold weather to speak of; but she and Ethel intended, I believed, to start for the south of France early in February. He inquired about you. His comments were such as a man makes on hearing just what he expects to hear, or knows beforehand. And for some time it seemed to be tacitly taken for granted between us that I should ask him no questions.

"As for me" I began, after a while.

He checked the mare's pace a little. "I know," he said, looking straight ahead between her ears; then, after a pause, "it has been a bad time for you. You are in a bad way altogether. That is why I came."

"But it was for you!" I blurted out. "Harry, if only I had known why you were taken—and what it was to you!"

He turned his face to me with the old confident comforting smile.

"Don't you trouble about that. That's nothing to make a fuss about. Death?" he went on musing—our horses had fallen to a walk again—"It looks you in the face a moment: you put out your hands: you touch—and so it is gone. My dear boy, it isn't for us that you need worry."

"For whom, then?"

"Come," said he, and he shook Vivandière into a canter.