"You'd be right, Jimmie, not to believe it. I haven't lived up to what I said."
"Oh Lord, honey! What's eating you now? Come to the point."
She would not meet his eyes, turning her head from him to hide lips that would quiver. "Honey, it—it ain't coming off—that's all. Not now—anyways."
"What ain't?"
"Us."
"Who?"
"You know what I mean, Jimmie. It's like everything the soldier boy on the corner just said. I—I saw you getting red clear behind your ears over it. I—I was, too, Jimmie. It's like that soldier boy was put there on that corner just to show me, before it was too late, how wrong I been in every one of my ways. Us women who are helping to foster slackers. That's what we're making of them—slackers for life. And here I been thinking it was your good I had in mind, when all along it's been mine. That's what it's been, mine!"
"Aw, now, Gert—"
"You got to go, Jimmie. You got to go, because you want to go and—because
I want you to go."
"Where?"