"Because I can't help it, for one thing," she cried; "and for another—" Turning away wearily she began to move toward the door. "Of course if you don't want to, I can't urge it, and so must learn to get along by myself."
Something in the last phrase prompted me to say:
"Is there anything specially wrong?"
"No; only everything specially wrong. If you had come back to the hotel with me I could have told you."
"Can't you tell me now? Is it about—about Stroud?"
"Oh no, Billy. Can't you forget about that? I have. He's dropped out of my existence. That was all a mistake, like the other things."
"What other things?"
"All the other things." She pointed to the big word "PEACE" staring at us from a chair to which I had thrown the newspaper. "Look at that. Doesn't it make all the last five years seem unreal, like a nightmare after you've got up? Well, that's the way I feel now ... about ... about—"
"About me?"
"Of course. I never should have thought it at all, only that Wolf and Dick Stroud, and even the military authorities— But at heart I didn't believe them—"