2
He pressed her hand, and remained silent. He had not dreamed of this....
“Isn’t that what we want, Felix?” she asked softly.
“I guess so,” he replied dully, looking away from her.... He knew he ought to be grateful to her; but he was sad rather, with the wish that he had had the courage to promise rash, mad, impossibly beautiful things.
Instead, he was to give her—uncertainty, insecurity....
Did she understand?
“Do you remember,” he asked, staring outward as if into the darkness, “what Garibaldi offered his soldiers? ‘Danger and wounds’”—
He paused. “That seems a queer sort of offer for a man to make to the girl he loves,” he said grimly. “But, Rose-Ann—”
“I enlist,” she said softly.
They pressed each other’s hand, looking away from each other, silently each in a separate world of dream. Then she smiled, coming back a little bewildered to the world of immediate fact. “I must call that taxi,” she said.