"I thought," he said. "I gave my very soul into her hands, to play with and laugh at—but I don't know. It doesn't hurt so much—as it did. Pam—I gave her everything that was best in me; and she encouraged me, she let me give, and when I had beggared myself—when I cared like hell—she flung my gifts back in my face and laughed. I wanted to humiliate her as she had humiliated me. I'm not a great man, Pam; she ground my pride and my love and my manhood under her heel—and I wanted to hit back."
"And I afforded you the opportunity," I said very quietly.
He looked out over the downs, his eyes were worried and troubled and his face was white.
"I wouldn't hurt you for the world, Pam; I have been thinking over this make-believe engagement of ours, wondering if it could possibly hurt you in any single way. The only thing I can see is that it might keep off another man who might want to marry you—and there isn't one about. It simply amounts to this: I give you a good time, and you wear a ring I gave you. I wouldn't hurt you, Pam. Sometimes I could almost fancy you're not like other women—you're not a beastly little actress. I suppose I seem an awful cad sometimes. We can't cry off just now, kid; the Service makes prisoners of us all. I can't leave here, whatever happens, until I go to France with my battery in five weeks' time; and if we pretended things were broken off now our position would be intolerable. We've got to carry on. I'll make the next five weeks as pleasant as ever I can for you."
Mother came out as we reached our gate, and Cheneston said good-bye.
She looked at me curiously as we went inside.
"You funny cold little thing," she said, "never a kiss."
One of the things that makes me feel frightfully sick is the amount mother and father are spending on clothes for me.
It's rather like an Arabian Nights dream to have a wardrobe full of perfectly adorable frocks, but I feel it's so unfair to let them spend all this money to get me settled when being settled is as remote as it ever has been.
I try to accept the light and airy "take what the good gods give" philosophy, but I am too aware that it isn't the good gods, it's mother and father who give, on a Major's pay, fully believing their reward will be made concrete in "The Voice that breathed o'er Eden," and the disposing of a singularly plain and unexciting daughter to a handsome young man with pots of money.