“No—over in the States,” I told him. “She tried everything imaginable, you know. She wanted so badly to feel that she was doing something in the War.”
“But tell me,” he interrupted, “what happened to the young chap, what’s his name? Marfield? I had the idea that he and your sister were more or less engaged.”
“Oh—Marfield’s over here now. Has something to do with providing entertainment for the men in camps.”
“I see.” He seemed very disappointed. “And he helped her get in over there, I suppose. Are they married?”
I had to laugh. “Of course not,” I told him. “He didn’t have anything to do with her getting into that work. And they’ll never be married as long as she has anything to say about it.”
“Aha—” he laughed. “That’s better. But doesn’t she like him? I’m interested, you see.”
“Well—” I replied with some hesitation, “I have a hunch that she thinks she would like someone else a lot more. You know how girls are!”
“Um—yes—surely.” He pulled out a package of cigarettes and I took one. We lit up from one of his matches and I waited for him to ask more questions.
But he seemed to have learned what he wished to know about my sister and changed the subject to me: wanted to know what I was doing, if he could help me along in any way, when I would be in Paris again, and whether I’d care to look him up the next time I got there. “We can find something to do, no doubt, and I’ll enjoy hearing more about that sister of yours.”
I told him I’d like very much to meet him in Paris, “but it would look rather odd for an enlisted man to be with an officer in a social way.”