“I’m waiting for you. Can you lunch with me?”
“What has happened?” she countered. “I can tell by your face that something has happened.”
“I’ve been ordered home.”
She did not reply for a moment, for his announcement brought her also face to face with a climax in her life. He was going home! The status quo which had been endurable, if difficult, was to be altered. While he was there and she was there their relations might go on as they were, somewhat anomalous, but requiring no immediate decisions or arrangements. They could drift and allow events to take care of themselves.... But now he was going, and she realized that she did not want him to go. She realized what she had repressed and concealed was now insisting upon recognition—that Kendall Ware was very important to her, that his presence was very important to her, and that for a time to which she was unable to set an exact limit she had been hoping that their relations would be determined in a manner satisfactory to herself.... She was bolder in facing the fact than Kendall had been. She faced it promptly and adjusted herself to it ... and the fact was that she loved him....
“Where shall we lunch?” she asked, and it would have been impossible to tell from her tone that in the brief pause that came before her question she had withstood a shock and mastered a crisis.
“The Oasis is quiet and we can talk.”
“But they’re so slow!”
“That doesn’t matter to-day. There’s—there’s so much to say.”
“To me?”
He nodded. “I’ve got to talk it out with you ... because you are the only person who can do any good. The same things are behind both of us. We know the same sort of people back home.... Don’t you see?”