She nodded. “Sometimes I’ve been very disappointed but, you see, sooner or later it’s all right. I’ve great faith in things being right.”
“You’re a curious girl,” he said. He looked at her and she could see her own face twice reflected in his eyes. “You don’t,” he said, “really like Bankton, do you?”
The words were making the proper patterns now. She turned so that he would see all her face when she spoke. “Yes, I like him very much but I don’t love him. I can’t love anyone without having it complete, without having ... the other thing.”
“What we had.”
“Yes, what we had.” She felt that now he was coming back again.
“It was so long ago, wasn’t it?” She wasn’t sure now that he was coming back: “so long ago.”
“I’ve remembered it,” she said. “It doesn’t seem long ago to me.”
“I don’t mean that,” he said. “I meant that ... well ... so much has happened to us since then. You’ve been married and I left the army....”
“We’re not much different, are we?” She looked out the window now and watched different lights go out in the tall buildings; for each light that went out, though, someone else turned on another. “You know,” she said, concentrating on the lights, “you know you were really the first for me.”
He was awkward now. “Yes, I guess I was. I didn’t....”