“I tried to help him.  I told him how some of the officers in the French and English armies, who had the highest decorations for courage, had suffered most horribly, in advance, from fear.  I could tell him two or three that I knew about personally; men who had told their own stories to me.  Well, that helped a little, roused him out of his daze, gave him a little gleam of hope perhaps.  But it wasn’t much; words can’t be, sometimes.

“He wanted more than that.  He wanted me.  He didn’t want to go back alone to that hotel.  So I kept him.  Early in the morning, about six o’clock, I cooked his breakfast and ate it with him and kissed him good-by.”

She made a sudden savage gesture of impatience.  “I didn’t mean to make it sound like that.  That sounds noble and self-sacrificial and sickening.  I suppose because that’s the half of the truth that is easiest to tell.  I did want to make an end of perpetually getting off cheap.  I did have a sort of feeling of establishing my good faith with myself.  I wanted to comfort him and make him happy.  But it’s also true that I’d been attracted to him from the very first minute, and that it thrilled me when I first touched his hand, there by the park railing, and afterward when he took me in his arms.”

Since his last interruption he had sat motionless, even breathing small in the extremity of his effort not to hinder.  But now he rose and without speaking, came to her and bending down, kissed her forehead, her eyes, her mouth.  Then he seated himself on the table close beside her and took possession, thoughtfully, of one of her hands.

“Did you ever hear anything more of him?” he asked.

She shook her head.  “I don’t think he remarked my name at all when we were introduced,” she said, “nor asked what it was afterward.  I think it must all have seemed afterward a little unreal to him.  The girls he’d known at home don’t smoke cigarettes nor drink champagne—­nor wear their dresses as low as we do.  He couldn’t once have thought of people like father and Rush and Aunt Lucile as belonging to me.  I remembered his name and used to look to see if it was there when I read the casualty lists, but I never did see it again.—­No, that’s the whole story; just what I have told you.”

CHAPTER XXV

DAYBREAK

There followed the conclusion of the story, an interval of ease.  It gave March, to begin with, a new access of courage, almost of confidence, to note that she did not fade white again and that the sick look of horror, banished from her eyes by the mere intensity of her determination to convey the whole truth to him, did not return to them.  She substituted her other hand for the one he held in order to shift her position a little and lean against his knees.

Her mind had not detached itself from the story as she made evident by the reflective way in which she went on thinking aloud about it; dwelling on some of the curious consequences of the adventure.  It was surprising—­she wondered if it indicated anything really abnormal in her—­the way she had felt about it afterward.