Penelope's eyes caressed him. “I'm so glad, Chris, if there is something for me to forgive. Is it—is it a woman story?”
“Well, yes.”
“Tell me. I won't misjudge you, dear,” she spoke confidently, although a shadow of pain flitted across her face. Then he began to tell of a hotel flirtation—a young woman he had met one night in Philadelphia. She wasn't so very pretty, but—her husband had treated her like the devil and—she was very unhappy and—they had rather a mad time together.
Christopher spoke in brief, business-like sentence's as if desiring to get through with a painful duty, but Penelope pressed him for details.
“What was her name—her first name?”
“Katherine.”
“Did you have supper with her—did she drink?”
“Was she—how shall I say it?—an alluring woman? Did she have a pretty figure?”
The soldier looked at his sweetheart in surprise and, without answering, he struck a match and meditatively followed the yellow flame as it consumed the wood. Penelope watched his well-shaped, well-kept hands.