“I do,” she said hurriedly, for the instinct on which she had slammed the door asserted itself. “I respected your joining up as you did. You did all you could do.”
“And hasn’t it got anything to do with love?” he asked.
She paused before replying and Robin went on:
“It’s not only your respect,” he said. “It’s the respect of everybody who is serious. They wouldn’t tell me I had lost their respect: they would only congratulate me on getting a staff-appointment. But what would Jim feel, or Badders, or Jelf?”
“But you told me that Mr. Jelf was a pacifist,” she said. “You said that he loved the Germans and hated the English.”
“That was all his way of talking. I haven’t told you what he’s done. He has not applied for a commission at all: he has joined as a private.”
She made another appeal.
“Robin, you are all I have got,” she said simply.
She looked up at him, and saw that the soft, firm crease still sat between his eyebrows.
“So don’t make the mule-face,” she added.