"I looked at her, such a little woman in her girl's clothes, but taller than she seemed in t'other rig-out, and I said, 'I didn't know you were married. I thought you were a kid of a girl. A widow. You didn't tell me.'
"'You didn't ask me,' she says. 'You might have seen I wore a wedding-ring. Men never do seem to notice rings—or anything else, I can't think why.'
"I stood there like a silly ass and said, 'I never thought of you being married. I s'pose I only looked at your face——'
"And I suppose I'd been magging so hard all yesterday about myself that I hadn't given the girl a chance to put her life history across me!
"She told me then, all quickly as I stood there, that she'd been married last year to her cousin, just before he went out. He was in the Flying Corps. He crashed in France just three months after they'd been married. Then she joined this Women's Legion. (You know they're jolly particular who they let into it, Miss Olwen: have to have no end of refs. from padres and lawyers and people.) She threw herself into her job.... She'd been working like a nigger ever since....
"All I could think to say was 'Well, this knocks me out.'
"She laughed and asked me why it should make any difference, her being Mrs. Robinson instead of Miss? She asked me if I didn't like her in those things she'd got on? She said, 'Most people think it's rather becoming, all this black.'
"It made her little face look like a wild rose coming out of a coal-bucket, but what could I say to her? I tell you I was so flummoxed I stood there like a stuck pig—I don't know what I said next; honest, I don't.
"So then she offered me cigarettes, and I took one in a sort of dream, and felt all over myself for matches. Couldn't find any.
"Only, then——