He found himself talking to her in a way in which he had never spoken to any woman. Afterwards, when he recalled their conversation, he wondered why. Was it because she had filled him with so complete a sense of rest? One didn't have to explain things to her; she understood. He asked her how it was that she understood and she replied, “You don't have to go to war to learn how to endure. You can stay at home and yet beat off attacks in the front-line trench. We women defeat despair by keeping on smiling when there's nothing left to smile about, and by wearing pretty dresses when there's no one to take a pride in what we wear.”
He retorted unguardedly, as he felt. “But there must be heaps of people who take a pride in you.”
“You think so? You're unspoilt and generous. Life's a wonderful dream that lies all before you. You haven't known sorrow. Do you know what you seemed to be saying when you spoke to me through the shadows? 'Everybody has always loved and trusted me, so you love and trust me, too.' If it hadn't been for that, that I saw that you'd always been loved and were lonely for the moment, I shouldn't have sat here talking with you for the last hour. You'll get everything you want from life, if you'll only wait for it. You'll come back.”
While he sat at her feet in the firelight, she had the knack of making him feel like a little boy who was being comforted. She kept aloof from him, but she mothered him with words. He found himself glancing up at her furtively to make sure that she wasn't as old as she pretended. She wasn't old at all—not a single day older than himself. He turned over in his mind what she had said about having no one to be proud of her. He would have given a lot for the chance to be proud of her himself. But he was going to France tomorrow—there was no time left for that. With so much fighting and dying to be done, it seemed as though there would never again be time for anything that was personal.
The clamour in the skies had died down.
The crash of guns had been growing infrequent; now it had subsided. The drone of planes could be no more heard. The invader had been driven back; hard on his heels our aerial cavalry were following across the Channel, awaiting their moment to exact revenge when he tried to land.
The restored normality seemed to rouse her reserve. Lifting the sleeping head from her lap, she whispered, “Wake up, Robbie; we can go home now. It's all over.”