I went to the old Hornblower house by the way I had taken when I had last come away from it—down Mrs. Grace’s steps to the beach—along the shore—and up the steps to the lawn where the foxgloves bordered the scrub-oak.
I went back to the veranda where I had waited and sat down in one of the same chairs. Taking out a cigarette, I lighted it and began to smoke.
Perhaps some one had seen me from a window, for in a little while there was the click of high heels on the bare steps of the stairway. Then out on the veranda came a figure too little to be tall and too tall to be considered little, carrying herself proudly, placing her dainty feet daintily, but advancing toward me instead of going away. She was dressed in white, with a scarlet band about her waist and another about her dashing Panama, of the same shade as her lips. In the opening at the neck she wore a string of pearls. Lower down, the opening was fastened by a diamond bar-pin. In her hand she carried a gold-mesh purse, which she threw carelessly on a table as she passed.
She met me as any hostess meets a man who comes to make a call. We talked of the topics of the day, beginning with the weather. From the weather we passed to the war, and to all our anxieties and humiliations through the spring. We could do this, however, with a ray of cheerfulness, because the Château-Thierry salient was beginning to be wiped out.
“But why do things have to happen the way they do?” I asked her. “If we’re going to win, why couldn’t we have won from the first? What’s the use of all this backing and filling, this losing and taking, and relosing and retaking, the same old ground? Oh, I know there are the usual explanations as to our not being up to the mark in munitions and man power; but I mean what is the explanation from the point of view of an All-Powerful and All-Intelligent—?”
“Isn’t it the same explanation that applies to every human life?”
“Well, what’s that?”
“I don’t know that I can tell you,” she smiled, thoughtfully; “but I do feel sure that we need our experiences. With minds and natures like ours we’re not fitted to go straight and simply from point to point. The long way round has to be our short way home, and—and—the way things happen is the best way.... Oh, dear, what’s happening?”
It was admirably staged. The slipping of the string of pearls to the floor could hardly have been another accident. For me there was but one thing to do.
Springing to my feet I stooped and picked the necklet up. Having picked it up, I put it in my pocket.