“But I’m no girl-clerk,” Concepcion gently and carelessly protested.

“Well, she wasn’t either.  I shouldn’t have wanted you to be a typist.  We have a typist.  As a matter of fact, her job needed a bit more brains than she’d got.  However—­”

Another silence.  G.J. rose to depart.  Concepcion did not stir.  She said softly: 

“I don’t think anybody realises what Queen’s death is to me.  Not even you.”  On her face was the look of sacrifice which G.J. had seen there as they talked together in Queen’s boudoir during the raid.

He thought, amazed: 

“And they’d only had about twenty-four hours together, and part of that must have been spent in making up their quarrel!”

Then aloud: 

“I quite agree.  People can’t realise what they haven’t had to go through.  I’ve understood that ever since I read in the paper the day before yesterday that ’two bombs fell close together and one immediately after the other’ in a certain quarter of the West End.  That was all the paper said about those two bombs.”

“Why!  What do you mean?”

“And I understood it when poor old Queen gave me some similar information on the roof.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was between those two bombs when they fell.  One of ’em blew me against a house.  I’ve been to look at the place since.  And I’m dashed if I myself could realise then what I’d been through.”

She gave a little cry.  Her face pleased him.

“And you weren’t hurt?”

“I had a pain in my side, but it’s gone,” he said laconically.

“And you never said anything to us!  Why not?”

“Well—­there were so many other things....”

“G.J., you’re astounding!”

“No, I’m not.  I’m just myself.”

“And hasn’t it upset your nerves?”

“Not as far as I can judge.  Of course one never knows, but I think not.  What do you think?”

She offered no response.  At length she spoke with queer emotion: 

“You remember that night I said it was a message direct from Potsdam?  Well, naturally it wasn’t.  But do you know the thought that tortures me?  Supposing the shrapnel that killed Queen was out of a shell made at my place in Glasgow!...  It might have been....  Supposing it was!”

“Con,” he said firmly, “I simply won’t listen to that kind of talk.  There’s no excuse for it.  Shall I tell you what, more than anything else, has made me respect you since Queen was killed?  Ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have managed to remind me, quite illogically and quite inexcusably, that I was saying hard things about poor old Queen at the very moment when she was lying dead on the roof.  You didn’t.  You knew I was very sorry about Queen, but you knew that my feelings as to her death had nothing whatever to do with what I happened to be saying when she was killed.  You knew the difference between sentiment and sentimentality.  For God’s sake, don’t start wondering where the shell was made.”