But in the midst of a great shaven patch there was a horrible scalp-wound which claimed her deftest skill. And she worked with steady fingers and uncovered the maimed brows and eyelids and cheekbones. How the sight had been preserved was a miracle. She cleansed the wounds with antiseptics and freed the eyelashes. She bent over him with deliberate intent.
"You can open your eyes for a second or two. You can see all right?"
With her swift craft, she blindfolded him anew, completed the bandaging, laid him back on his pillow, and went off with the probationer, wheeling the table to the other cases.
Later in the day, she was doing him some trivial service.
"What's the good of lying in bed all day?" he asked. "I want to get up and walk about."
"Call that a temperature? I've gone about with a hundred and three."
"When I first went out to Canada. I'm English, you know--only left the Old Country in Nineteen thirteen. But, when the war broke out, I joined up with the first batch of Canadians--lucky to start with a commission. Lord, it was hell's delight!"
"So I've been given to understand," said Camilla. "But what about your temperature of a hundred and three?"
"I was a young fool," said he, "and I didn't care what happened to me."
For a while he did not answer. He bit his lower lip, showing just a fine line of white teeth. Memory again clutched her. She was also struck by his unconscious realization of the aging quality of the war in that he spoke of his Nineteen-thirteen self as "a young fool." So far as that went, they thought in common.
"Your voice reminds me of some one I used to know."
"It couldn't have been me. I've only just come to London--and I've never met Major Shileto before in my life."
"Of course not," he asserted readily. "But I had no idea two human voices could be so nearly identical."
"Still," she remarked, "you haven't told me of the temperature of a hundred and three."
"Oh, it is no story. Your voice brought it all back. You've heard of a man's own angry pride being cap and bells for a fool? Well"--he laughed apologetically--"it's idiotic. There's no point in it. I just went about for a week in a Canadian winter with that temperature--that's all."
"Because you couldn't bear to lie alone and think?"