rls 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.

She'd felt nothing in the least like shame. Certainly not at first. On
the contrary, she'd taken a deep soul-satisfying pride in it, a kind of
warm sense of readiness for anything.

She told him with a little clutch of embarrassment and resolution, about
another incident that happened somewhat later, attributing an importance
to it which he conceded while he reflected with a smile that most people,
men and women virtuous or otherwise, would have regarded as ridiculously
disproportionate. The incident concerned a man whom she didn't much like,
she said, but found somehow, fascinating. He had been paying her
attentions of a rather experimental sort for weeks, maneuvering,
arranging. He knew she lived by herself and had been angling for an
invitation to come to see her, alone. Finally, he telephoned her office
one day and asked point-blank if he mightn't come to tea that afternoon.
She said he might without telling him that she was expecting Christabel
Baldwin at the same time. An hour later, a restless hour it had been, she
had telephoned Christabel and put her off so that when her other guest
came he found just what he had expected. In the manner of one sure of his
welcome and intent on wasting no time, he had begun making love to her