You must let me know later on how he is." The maitre d'hotel retreated with a little bow.

Geraldine turned to Captain Granet.
"I think," she said, "that you must be very kind-hearted, for a soldier." He turned and looked at her.
"Why ?" "You must have been so many horrible sights--so many dead people, and yet--" "Well ?" he persisted.
"There was something in your face when the man staggered back, a kind of horror almost.

I am sure you felt it quite as much as any of us." He was silent for a moment.
"In a battlefield," he observed slowly, "one naturally becomes a little callous, but here it is different.

The fellow did look ghastly ill, didn't he?
I wonder what was really the matter with him." "We shall know when Major Thomson returns," she said.
Granet seemed scarcely to hear her words.

A curious fit of abstraction had seized him.