At last they brought me to where Lola lay, in a darkened room, with her head tightly bandaged.  A dark mass spread over the pillow which I knew was her glorious hair.  I could scarcely see the unbandaged half of her face.  She still suffered acute pain, and I was warned that my visit could only be of brief duration, and that nothing but the simplest matters could be discussed.  I sat down on a chair by the left side of the bed.  Her wonderful nervous hand clung round mine as we talked.

The first thing she said to me, in a weak voice, like the faint echo of her deep tones, was: 

“I’m going to lose all my good looks, Simon, and you won’t care to look at me any more.”

She said it so simply, so tenderly, without a hint of reproach in it, that I almost shouted out my horrible remorse; but I remembered my injunctions and refrained.  I strove to comfort her, telling her mythical tales of surgical reassurances.  She shook her head sadly.

“It was like you to stay in Berlin, Simon,” she said, after a while.  “Although they wouldn’t let me see you, yet I knew you were within call.  You can’t conceive what a comfort it has been.”

“How could I leave you, dear,” said I, “with the thought of you throbbing in my head night and day?”

“How did you find me?”

“Through Conto and Blag.  I tried all other means, you may be sure.  But now I’ve found you I shan’t let you go again.”

This was not the time for elaborate explanations.  She asked for none.  When one is very ill one takes the most unlikely happenings as commonplace occurrences.  It seemed enough to her that I was by her side.  We talked of her nurses, who were kind; of the skill of Dr. Steinholz, who brought into his clinique the rigid discipline of a man-of-war.

“He wouldn’t even let me have your flowers,” she said.  “And even if he had I shouldn’t have been able to see them in this dark hole.”

She questioned me as to my doings.  I told her of my move to Barbara’s Building.

“And I’m keeping you from all that splendid work,” she said weakly.  “You must go back at once, Simon.  I shall get along nicely now, and I shall be happy now that I’ve seen you again.”

I kissed her fingers.  “You have to learn a lesson, my dear, which will do you an enormous amount of good.”

“What is that?”

“The glorious duty of selfishness.”

Then the minute hand of the clock marked the end of the interview, and the nurse appeared on the click and turned me out.

After that I saw her daily; gradually our interviews lengthened, and as she recovered strength our talks wandered from the little incidents and interests of the sick-room to the general topics of our lives.  I told her of all that had happened to me since her flight.  And I told her that I wanted her and her only of all women.

“Why—­oh, why, did you do such a foolish thing?” I asked.