"Letting me down lightly?" he smiled.
"No, an honest fact."
When he gazed at her with kindly incredulity, she edged herself closer and bent forward in a generous effort to persuade him.
"Don't you see that what you've said of yourself was true of me as well?"
"I wasn't talking in particular of myself," he parried; "I was including all the other men."
"Yes, but especially of yourself. It was of yourself that you were talking. What you've said of yourself is true of me and—oh, of almost all women. We saw you men march away; you seemed lost to us forever. Everything seemed at an end. So we did what you did—chose one man who would em
body all our dreams and become especially ours. We wrote to him, shopped for him, placed his portrait on our dressing-tables, were anxious for him and, oh, so proud of him. We didn't stop to ask whether he was the man with whom we could live for always. There wasn't any always. It didn't look as though there was ever again going to be any always. And then the horror stopped and we found ourselves with a man on our hands—a man who, though we had known him so well, would come back to us different. We hadn't meant to cheat him when we made all those promises; but now that he's really ours, we're not sure that we—— All the ecstasies and tears that we wrote to him on paper——" She made a helpless gesture with her hands. "They don't seem real. It's not our fault. They belonged to the part of nurses and soldiers that we were acting. And now we've slipped out by the stage-door and we've become ourselves. Don't you see, Tabs, we men and girls have got to find out afresh who we are? We've almost forgotten."
She seemed to have made an end, when something else occurred to her. She recommenced hurriedly, "We women have been spendthrifts, too; we've given away more than was wise—little bits of ourselves, not always to the one man—sometimes in the wrong directions. But which is the right direction? When people who were risking so much for us begged for a little of our affection, we never thought of that. We simply gave recklessly—little bits of ourselves. Now that we've regained a future, with room for remorse and things like that, we've become sud
denly cautious. The swing of the pendulum——" She turned to him, as though proffering a smile for his forgiveness, "It's our sudden caution that makes us seem mean and ungracious. But I was tremendously interested about meeting you."
"Interested! Not glad or ecstatic. It's a long road from dreams to facts."