Then he saw Viola.

For one second, while he stared at her across the room, he appeared to be suffering from a violent shock.  He was so visibly hit that the two men who had their backs to us turned round to see what it was that had affected him.  His flush had gone suddenly and he was breathing hard, with his mouth a little open.

I heard him saying something in French about his wife.

He recovered, however, in a second, and disentangled himself from the
General and the Colonels and from the dinner-table, and came forward.

And as he came, I noticed something odd about him.  He limped slightly.  His khaki had a battered look; it was soiled and torn in places, and the Red Cross brassard on his sleeve was simply filthy.

And he had only been out three days, mind you.  He was only three days ahead of us.  But he had lost no time.

As they strolled up to each other and met midway in the big public room, in the fraction of time that passed before their hands touched I heard him draw a hard, quivering breath and let it out in a long sigh.  That breath was a suppressed cry of trouble and of acquiescence.

Then (I could have blessed him for it) he twinkled.

Viola said, “What have you been up to?”

And Jimmy, “I say, I like that!  What are you doing here?  Have you come to look at the Belfry?”

“No.  I’ve come to look at you!” She put her hand on his shoulder.

He said, “That’s a jolly rig-out you’ve got,” and that was all.

The General and the two Colonels came forward and were presented to Mrs. Jevons; and Mr. Walter Furnival ("one of our war-correspondents”) was presented to the General and the two Colonels.  They saluted Madame; they begged Madame to accept their profoundest congratulations; they regretted that Madame had not been present just now when they were drinking her husband’s health.

And the old General (the one with the white hair and imperial) informed her that Monsieur her husband had a very poor opinion of the Belgian Army.

“He has saved the lives of three Belgian officers and I do not know how many Belgian soldiers—­and he says that it is nothing!”

And the stout, florid Colonel, who had been trying to look young and rakish ever since he had turned and caught sight of Viola, suggested that “Perhaps, if he had saved your British, he would not have said that it was nothing.”

And the lean, iron-grey Colonel with the ferocious moustache remarked in an austere, guttural voice, “Il est impayable—­lui!”

Jimmy had been offering cigarettes to them as if he thought that was the only thing that would stop them.  Then the old white-haired General sat between Viola and him with his arm round Jimmy’s shoulder and began again, so loudly that everybody in the room could hear him.