[Illustration: "He will require more care, better dressing"]
He gave the same old cry that he had given ages before when he had come out of another nightmare of unconsciousness and fear, "It's Leerie--why, it's Leerie!"
And Sheila smiled down at him again with the old luminous smile.
When he was sufficiently mended to look about him and take reckoning of what had happened, he asked first for the ring that he had bought for that long-before wedding and that he had carried ever since with him. And he asked, second, for the chaplain.
Sheila drew the gold chain from about her neck and dangled the ring in front of his nose. "I took it when we cut off your coat that night, and I've kept it handy ever since. The chaplain's handy, too. He's promised--any hour of the day or night. Shall we send for him--now?"
The nurse turned to go, hesitated, and then came back to the cot. Peter thought he had never seen her eyes so full of wonder.
"Man o' mine, maybe you won't want me when you know I almost let you go, that I intended to let you die to save first a French lad that came in with you."
Peter grinned. "Same old Leerie! Well, we're quits, sweetheart, and I'm glad to have it off my conscience. Sort of did the same thing myself. Rushed off in the shelling to bring in that same poor chap--he'd got a bullet in his leg--and all the time I knew I ought to be thinking of you first and hanging on to safety. Funny, isn't it, how something queer gets you in the midst of it all and you do the last thing in the world you want to do? A year or two and the whole thing will be unexplainable."
Sheila bent over and laid her lips to Peter's. She knew that in a year--in a century--they would still understand why they had done these things, and she was glad they had both paid their utmost for the love and happiness that she knew was theirs now for all time.
Peter broke on her reverie with a chuckle. "Remember old Hennessy saying once that he believed you would give me away with everything else--if you thought anybody else needed me more? He'd certainly wash his hands of the pair of us."
"Hennessy's an old dear. I'll get the chaplain, and afterward let's send Hennessy the first--and the best--cable he's ever had. Sort of owe it to him, don't we?"