Her lips trembled. He was in terror lest she would give way to crying. If it hadn't been for the table that parted them with its unromantic débris of dishes—— As it was he leant across and assured her earnestly, "I'm not cross with you, my dearest girl. I'm—— Terry, how is it that we've drifted so apart? I keep groping after the old Terry; for a minute I think I've found her, and then she's no longer there."
Drying her eyes, she nodded. "It hurts most frightfully. That's what I keep doing, barking my shins in the dark, trying to follow the old Tabs. He's always going away from me——"
"I think it's the laughter that I miss most," she said presently; "you've grown so stern."
"I've seen stern things happen—a kind of Judgment Day. It's remembered things that are so silencing."
"I know what you mean. I saw some of those things in our hospital in France." She shut her eyes as if the memory was unbearable. "But don't be hard on people who have a right to be young and who want to forget. It isn't that they're ungrateful." Then she surprised him, "People like Maisie and myself."
"Don't couple yourself with her." He spoke more sharply than he had intended.
"But she was with me out there," she expostulated. "That was how she met her second husband, Gervis. She nursed him."
"It makes no difference how she met him; she's not in your class—a woman who has been divorced three times."
"But she hasn't. Whatever made you think that?" Terry shot upright on her chair, for all the world like a startled rabbit.