“And then what happened?” For an innocent girl my curiosity about such situations was unspeakable.
“Why—she gave me a big goblet o’ champagne an’ I downs it at a gulp.... It tasted damn funny but she had me all worked up so I couldn’t think straight anyway, the little b——!”
“What you kicking about?” I asked in surprise. It didn’t seem to me that a man should talk that way about a woman after she’s been good to him.
“Kickin’ about?” he demanded. “An’ you bouncin’ in about two minutes later! That’s what I’m kickin’ about!”
“You’re crazy,” I told him. “I stayed away almost an hour. What were you doing all that time?”
“Oh—fer Christ’s sake!” He was mad—at me, I assumed, but I was wrong. “What a dumb b—— I am!”
So I didn’t know yet what had happened.
—12—
This affair was ended, in so far as I was concerned. The General came out of the hospital finally, full of pep and ambition and said he wanted to leave Paris next morning. “We’ve had a good rest and now we’ll get back to the business of winning the war,” he told me. “There’s much to do right around here, but I want to get away from the city for a while, so we’ll drop down to Le Mans and Orléans and then come back here in a week or so.”
I reported this to the Captain at once. He was keenly disappointed. Also confessed about taking Ben over, and about the maid and the man named Keith. He blamed me for taking Ben, and also for not hanging around so I could follow the maid when she went out to meet the chaplain.... “However,” he said, “you’ve helped a lot, and I’m going to see about having you transferred, after the General has cleaned up some of his work.” He made me promise to look him up as soon as I got back to Paris.