“Well, that’s just it. Oughtn’t one to brighten the place up a little?”
Stacey shook his head. “I’m no damned beauty-doctor. Just the facts—the right ones—in the best way.”
Stacey played tennis hard for an hour every afternoon when he had finished work; for his strong body craved exercise. But his mind did not crave companionship. He mingled with only a few people, and most of these doubtless resented his manner as seeming hard and cold. In this they were wrong. Stacey was merely aloof. He was not superior, judging these people adversely; he was simply not letting them in—or himself into them. He had a feeling that this world of personal relationships was too rich. It was more like a sea. One might be swept away futilely on it. Toward those whom he did admit as companions—and they were sometimes the unlikeliest people—he was prodigal of interest, in his own different way as altruistic as Mrs. Latimer.
For his hasty luncheon Stacey frequented a small cheap restaurant near-by. So, also, did Jack Edwards, who had been commander of the local American Legion post at the time Stacey had set it in a turmoil, but was so no longer, having been succeeded by some one less incongruously radical. The two fell into the habit of sitting down at table together for their fifteen-minute meal, and Stacey found himself at once attracted by the other man. Something in his firm lined face—perhaps the odd expression of the brown eyes—hinted at a tortured courageous personality. Stacey was friendly from the first. Edwards, on the other hand, was in the beginning obviously suspicious. But he thawed gradually, and the two became friends, united by some deep, almost unrecognized resemblance between them. Yet for a long time their talk was hardly more than casual comment on events.
“What do you do after lunch?” asked Stacey one June day, as they pushed back their chairs and rose. “You must surely take more time off than this before going back to work.”
“Oh,” the other replied, “I generally stroll around for twenty minutes—down to the river sometimes.”
“Come up to my office and smoke a cigarette, won’t you? There’ll be no one there for half an hour yet.”
“Don’t care if I do.” And the two men paid their checks and went out together, Stacey walking slowly, since Edwards limped badly on account of his wounded leg.
In Stacey’s room they sat down, with the littered desk between them, and smoked silently for some minutes. Stacey had his feet up against the side of an open drawer, but suddenly he swung them down and turned to face his friend.
“Edwards,” he demanded abruptly, “what do you think of the war, anyway?”