Four hours later all my exasperatingly complicated arrangements for a two-weeks' absence were made--the requisite motions had been the purest somnambulism--and by the ample margin of fifty seconds I had caught an express--to do it that courtesy--moving with dignity, at decent intervals, toward all that I lived by and despaired of and held inviolably dear. But the irony of Jimmy's last three words went always with me, a monotonous ache blurring every impulse toward hope and joy. Susan was not dead, was not dying! "No cause for real worry." Jimmy would not have said that if he had feared the worst. It was not his way to shuffle with facts; he was by nature direct and sincere. No; Susan would recover--thank God for it! Thank--and then, under all, through all, over and over, that aching monotony: "She needs you. Jimmy. She needs you. Jimmy." "Needs me!" I groaned aloud. "_Plaît-il?_" politely murmured the harassed-looking little French captain, my vis-à-vis. "_Mille pardons, monsieur_," I murmured back. "_On a quelquefois des griefs particuliers, vous savez._" "_Ah dame, oui!_" he sighed. "_Par le temps qui court!_" "_Et ce pachyderme de train qui ne court jamais!_" I smiled. "_Ah, pour ça--ça repose!_" murmured the little French captain, and shut his eyes. "She needs you. Jimmy. She needs you. Jimmy. She needs----" Then, miraculously, for two blotted hours I slept. But I woke again, utterly unrefreshed, to the old refrain: _She needs you--needs you--needs you...._ The little French captain was still asleep, snoring now--but softly--in his corner. Ah, lucky little French captain! _Ça repose!_ IV One afternoon, five or six days later, I was seated by the white-enamelled iron bed in the small white room. Susan had had a long, quiet, normal nap, and her brisk sparrow-eyed Norman nurse, in her pretty costume of the French Red Cross, had come to me in the little reception-room of the hospital, where I had been sitting for an hour stupidly thumbing over tattered copies of ancient American magazines, and had informed me--with rather an ambiguous twinkle of those sparrow eyes--that her patient had asked to see me as soon as she had waked, was evidently feeling stronger, and that it was to be hoped _M. le Capitaine_ would be discreet and say nothing to excite or fatigue the poor little one. "_Je me sauve, m'sieu_," she had added, mischievously grave; "_on ne peut avoir l'oeil à tout, mais--je compte sur vous._" So innocently delighted had she been by her pleasant suspicions, it was impossible to let her feel how sharply her raillery had pained me. But I could not reply in kind. I had merely bowed, put down the magazine in my hand, and so left her--to inevitable reflections, I presume, upon the afflicting reticence of these otherwise so agreeable allies _d'outre mer_. Their education was evidently deplorable. One never knew when they would miss step, inconveniently, and so disarrange the entire social rhythm of a conversation.