Then at another thought my heart stood still. Suppose he should be killed? I pictured myself in deep mourning, wearing on my breast the medal he had won for bravery, which with his dying breath he had asked his comrades to send to “my wife!” I couldn’t help brushing away a tear then and was quite bewildered when Agony poked me and wanted to know if I wasn’t ever going to make a move to go home. The show was over and the people were streaming out. I hadn’t seen a bit of the last two acts.
Down in the lobby I saw Him again. He was standing by the door talking to another man in uniform. How he stood out among all other men! He was one out of a thousand. My heart beat to suffocation and I couldn’t raise my eyes. In a moment more I must pass him. I tried to look straight ahead, but something I couldn’t resist drew my head around and I turned and looked straight into his eyes. He tilted back his head and gave me one long, thrilling glance, raised his hand to his cap, then blushed and looked down. Just then Gladys pulled at my sleeve and dragged me over to some girls we knew and we were swept out with the crowd to the sidewalk.
I scarcely knew where I was going. My feet walked along between Gladys and Migwan, but my soul was in the clouds, listening to strains of heavenly music, while the others squabbled over ice cream flavors and who should stand treat after the show. Ice cream! Ye gods! Who could eat ice cream with their soul seething in love?
From that hour when I had looked into Captain Bannister’s eyes and read the truth in them, I was a changed being. I listened in silence to the idle chatter of the girls around me as we walked to and from classes. Their souls were wrapped up in their knitting, in their lessons, in their meals. Agony and Oh-Pshaw were trying to learn a new and difficult back dive and they talked of nothing else night and day. They were constantly at me to come and try it, too, but I sat loftily apart, hugging my delicious secret. As it says in the poem we learned in literature class:
“What were the garden bowers of Thebes to me?”
Like Semele, I scorned the sports of mortals and thought only of my Beloved. I didn’t envy her a bit because her Love was Jupiter. What was Jupiter compared to Captain Bannister?
Twice I had seen him since that day in the theater—had spoken to him, in fact. He was stationed in the recruiting office and one day I happened to be walking past with old Professor Remie and he knew him and stopped and talked and introduced me. As if we needed any introduction! We chatted of commonplaces, but all the while our eyes told volumes. However, soul cannot speak to soul in a public recruiting station where curious eyes are looking on.
I had an errand uptown every day after that. Only once did I see him as I passed the recruiting station, however. Then he was throwing out a Socialist who had tried to stop the recruiting and he didn’t see me.
But the next day there came a perfectly huge box of chocolates, addressed quaintly to “Miss Bradford, Somewhere in Purgatory.” Inside the box was a card which read:
“The strand you dropped with careless art