have sat here talking with you for the last hour. You'll get everything you want from life, if you'll only wait for it. You'll come back.”
While he sat at her feet in the firelight, she had the knack of making him feel like a little boy who was being comforted. She kept aloof from him, but she mothered him with words. He found himself glancing up at her furtively to make sure that she wasn't as old as she pretended. She wasn't old at all—not a single day older than himself. He turned over in his mind what she had said about having no one to be proud of her. He would have given a lot for the chance to be proud of her himself. But he was going to France tomorrow—there was no time left for that. With so much fighting and dying to be done, it seemed as though there would never again be time for anything that was personal.
The clamour in the skies had died down.
The crash of guns had been growing infrequent; now it had subsided. The drone of planes could be no more heard. The invader had been driven back; hard on his heels our aerial cavalry were following across the Channel, awaiting their moment to exact revenge when he tried to land.
The restored normality seemed to rouse her reserve. Lifting the sleeping head from her lap, she whispered, “Wake up, Robbie; we can go home now. It's all over.”
The officer had risen and stood leaning against the mantel, “So it's good-bye?”
“I'm afraid so.”
“You've made me happy when I least expected to be happy. Shall we meet again, I wonder?”
She smiled at his seriousness. “Perhaps. One never knows what the good God will allow. We didn't expect to meet tonight.”
He was sensitive to her evasion and laughed, pretending to make light of it. “We don't want them to think they've had burglars. We had better leave something for the coals we've burned.” He placed a pound note on the mantel.
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