"Mother, will you support me for a while?"
"Why, child, of course! I’ll do whatever I can for you. Have you lost your job?"
"No, but I’m going to try something new. It may not bring in anything much for quite a while, but I think after a time it’ll be a regular gold-mine. And it’s very nice. I know Eddie would like me to do it!"
CHAPTER EIGHT
I
She hadn’t allowed herself to think about Eddie’s reply. She insisted to herself that it would be, must be, favourable; but when the letter came, when at last she held it in her hand, she was panic-stricken. She reverted.
"Oh, Gawd!" she murmured. "What if he’s changed his mind?"
This is what she read:
MY dearest Girl:
You can’t possibly imagine how I felt when I got your letter. I was still in the hospital where I had been for five months with a bad foot, and, to tell you the truth, I didn’t care much whether I ever went out of it again. I can’t explain it very well, but there is something about the war and this filthy, brutal way of living that makes it unbearable to lose any pleasures or joys out of life. You get to believe that nothing matters except being happy. And you are my happiness. When I thought I’d lost you, I didn’t care about going on. Of course, there’s your country, and your family, and your ambition, and so on, but somehow they don’t seem real. I thought of you all the time. I wrote and wrote, and didn’t get any answer. Then I asked Vincent to look you up, but he wrote that you’d moved and he couldn’t trace you. I don’t quite see how I could have gone back on the firing-line again if you hadn’t written. It’s bad enough anyway, but it wouldn’t be bearable without some sort of guiding star. Don’t think I’m getting sentimental, Angelica, but you are that, you know, to me.