Oh, rare and splendid spirit! Fortune's darling thrice worthy of her dowry!
Nona had written of it in ringing words. She flushed in beautiful ardour of the enthusiasm she joined with Sabre's at his opening words of their meeting; but she ended with a sad little laugh. "And then!" she said.
She took a letter from her bag. "I only got this this morning just as I was coming away. It's in reply to the one I wrote him about his V.C. Oh, Marko, so splendid, so utterly splendid as he is, and then to be like this. Look, he says he's just got leave and he's going to spend it in Paris! One of his women is there. That Mrs. Winfred. He's taken up with her again. He says, 'Poor thing. She's all alone in Paris. I know how sorry you will feel for her, and I feel I ought to go and look after her. I know you will agree with me. I'll tell her you sent me. That will amuse and please her so.'"
She touched her eyes with her handkerchief. "It rather hurts, Marko. It's not that I mind his going. It's just what he would do. But it's the way he tells me. He just says it like that deliberately to be cruel because he knows it will hurt. So utterly splendid, Marko, and so utterly graceless." She gave her little note of sadness again. "Utterly splendid! Look, this is all he says about his V.C. Isn't this fine and isn't it like him? He says, 'P.S. Yes, that V.C. business. You know why I got it, don't you? It stands for Very Cautious, you know.'"
They laughed together. Yes, like him! Tybar exactly! Sabre could see him writing the letter. Delighting in saying words that would hurt; delighting in his own whimsicality that would amuse. Splendid; airy, untouched by fear; untouched by thought; fearless, faithless, heedless, graceless. Fortune's darling; invested in her robe of mockery.
Nona's laughter ended in a little catch at her breath. He touched her arm. "Let's walk, Nona."
He thought she was looking thin and done up. Her face had rather a drawn look, its soft roundness gone. He thought she never had looked so beautiful to him. She spoke to him of what she had tried to say in her letters of his disappointments in offering himself for service. Never had her sweet voice sounded so exquisitely tender to him. They spoke of the war. Never, but in their letters, had he been able thus to give his feelings and receive them, touched with the same perceptions, kindled and enlarged, back into his sympathies again. With others the war was all discussion of chances and circumstances, of this that had happened and that that might happen, of this that should be done and that that ought not to have been done. Laboratory examination of means and remedies. The epidemic everything and the patient upstairs nothing. The wood not seen for the trees. With Nona he talked of how he felt of England: