“Were you suspected?”
“Suspected of what?” she asked, her eyes getting wide.
“Of having had anything to do with it.”
“Good heavens, no. Everyone was just as sympathetic and nice to me as they could be. But — well, it clung to me. Of course, the people where I was working knew all about it. They’d keep talking about it. Once when I went out with a fellow one of the girls in the office didn’t like she came to me and told me that a man had given his life in order to protect my honor, that I shouldn’t hold it cheaply.”
“What did you do?”
“I wanted to slap her face. All I could do was to smile and thank her.
“I quit my job, went to work in another place. In about two months they found out all about me. It was the same thing over and over. I suppose I’m just a damn heathen. I didn’t love this man. I liked him. I was going with him off and on, but I was also going with some others. I had no intention of marrying him. If I’d known what he was going to do, I’d have stopped him. I didn’t want him to give his life for me. It was a brave thing to do. It was a wonderful thing to do. It was so — so damned quixotic.”
“I think it was what any man would have done under similar circumstances.”
She smiled. “Statistics prove that you’re wrong.”
I knew she was right, so didn’t say anything more.