“Unless I’m very wrong,” she said, after a little breathless silence, “you aren’t given to telling lies to anyone at all, man or woman, Mr.—Brinton. As for going to the war under another name, I can’t see anything very terrible in that. I take it you didn’t enlist with the idea of cheating folks out of anything?”
“No!” he declared, almost fiercely. “No!”
And again silence fell, there in the dusty, lavender-scented garret.
Dusk was pushing the shadows forward from the mysterious corners and shoving them farther and farther into the little window-lit space where sat the man and woman.
At last Mrs. Sessions said:
“I s’pose all women are inquisitive.”
“They must have one drawback to keep them mortal,” he countered, with a brave attempt at his earlier tone of gallantry.
“But,” she went on impersonally, “why a fine, upstanding man like you should go to war under a silly name like Dadd, when he’s got such a fine name as Brinton, certainly does make me curious. Not,” she added, in polite haste, “not that it’s any of my business—as maybe you were going to say.”
“I was going to say,” he contradicted, “that any of my affairs are also your affairs. As far as you honor me, ma’am, by making them so.”
“You say pretty things,” she laughed in pleased embarrassment. “I wonder if a woman ever gets too old to love to hear them. Pretty speeches wasn’t Ehud’s way. But he always liked to hear other menfolk make them to me. It flattered his judgment, he used to say.”