repared for this altered man with
his limp and his gauntness and his strained intensity. She couldn't
bring herself to believe that this grave, spent, unlaughing person at
her side was Tabs, the gallant, care-free comrade she had asked to marry
her. She was shocked both at him and at herself. And she had wanted to
be so glad--to make him feel that every one was so happy at having him
back----

"Terry."

At the sound of her name, spoken like that, a little thrill of his
old-time power stirred her; it traveled up to her eyes, so that she had
to press back the tears before she turned.

"Terry, it was sentimental blackmail. I'm sorry."

"What was? I don't understand."

"That last letter. I oughtn't to have reminded you. What one promises at
seventeen doesn't hold good. It was sporting of you to keep the promise
by meeting me this morning, but---- What I'm trying to say is this; I'm
forgetting everything that you would like me to forget."

"But I'm not sure that I want you to forget anything." She widened her
lips into a smile from which the trouble was only half dispelled. "It
sounds horrid and unfriendly, this talk of forgetting, as though---- It
sounds so much worse when it's put into words, as though we had
something of which to be ashamed."

"No, it's not like that. May I be terrifically honest--just as we used?"

She eyed him doubtfully. It was evident that she was still timid of the
truth. Then she nodded.

"Well, you know how it was between us before I went away. You were of an
age when most people still thought of you as a child. You _were_
outwardly, but inside you were almost a woman. The little girl did
things and promised things that the woman wouldn't approve to-day. And
then take my side of it. I went out to a place where life seemed at an
end and where, because of that, one became selfish in the demands he
made on the people whom he had left behind--especially on the women. It
was impossible to be normal; probably I'm not quite normal now. But the
point is this: every man in khaki thought intensely of some one girl. It
didn't matter whether he had the right to think of her; he just thought
of her, and wrote to her, and carried her photo with him up to an
attack, as if he had the right. He wasn't even much disturbed as to
whether, in allowing him to love her, she loved him in return or was
merely being patriotic; he didn't expect to live to put things to a
test. All he wanted was the belief that one