"He did, as far as we know. He gave no sign to the contrary."
"But does she, Lady Dawn, think that?"
"Think that he hated her?"
"No, that he died hating her?"
Maisie picked up a cigarette from the table and looked to Tabs for a match. She was getting bored. "Why, certainly. One doesn't want to be cynical, but all the deaths on the casualty-lists weren't total losses. Some of them were releases. They weren't all—well, to put it mildly, occasions for wearing the deepest mourning. There were English wives to whom German shells were merciful—more merciful than English law. If they took lives, there were cases in which they restored freedom."
As Tabs struck a match and held it to her cigarette, his hand trembled. He had to steady his passion before he asked his question. "And you think that she, Lady Dawn, was one of these?"
Maisie blew out a lazy puff of smoke. "Everybody thinks so." Then she added pointedly, "Everybody who knows her and has a right to an opinion."
Tabs refused to be put off. There was a polite forbearance in his tone when he spoke. "The first thing to do is to make sure that my Dawn was the same as yours. Mine was known to us by no title; he was a Captain in the same battalion as myself. He was killed in front of Pozières.—Ah, I see by the way you start, that so was yours! But here's where the difference comes in; mine loved his wife, if she was his wife, more dearly than any man I have known. His devotion was the talk of the regiment."
She flipped the ash off her cigarette. "Then that puts him out of the running, doesn't it?"