"You can't reason in that way. You can't really reason about the thing at all. The most freakish thing in the world is whom people'll fall in love with."
"It must be," he said humbly.
"Oh, cheer up; it isn't as bad as all that. There's no disgrace in my being in love with you. If you'll just be in love with me I'll take care of myself."
They laughed like children. To neither was it strange to have taken their love for granted, since they had done it for so long. It was as if it had grown with them, as if it had been born with them. Its flowers had opened because it was their springtime; there was nothing else for it to do. It was a stormy springtime, with only the rarest bursts of sunshine; but for that very reason they must make the most of such sunshine as there was. They had not met for two years; it might be two years more before they met again. They could only throw their hearts wide open.
She talked of her work. In her mood of reaction it seemed to her now a stupid, foolish work, not because it hadn't done good, but because it had done good for such useless purposes. A New York woman whom she knew, whose son had been killed fighting with the British in the earlier part of the war, had opened a sort of club for the cheering up of young fellows passing through Paris, or there for a short leave.
"We bucked them up so that they'd be willing to go back again, and be blown to bits. It was like giving the good breakfast and the cigarette to the man going out to the electric chair. My God, what a nerve we had, we girls! We'd laugh and dance with those poor young chaps, who a few days later would be in their graves, if the shells left anything to bury. We didn't think much about it then. It's only now that it comes over me. I feel as if I'd been their executioner."
"You're tired. You need a rest."
"Rest won't reconcile me to belonging to a race of wild beasts. Oh, Tom, couldn't we make a little life for ourselves away from everyone, and from all this cheap vindictiveness? I shouldn't care how humble or obscure it was."
He laughed, quietly. "There are a good many hurdles to take before we come even to the humble and obscure."
"Hurdles? What kind of hurdles?"