“I went to the Red Cross early. I haven’t read it.” Her pulse stopped. “Lynnette! Not—Dick?”
“Oh, no—oh, no!” Lynnette went crimson painfully. Another girl would have had her arms around the woman, but not this one. To show feeling was like pulling teeth to Lynnette. “It’s not that,” she said. “But—there’s to be a peace conference. You know. And they want to bring back for us at that time, Armistice Day, an unknown soldier.”
“The two things.” Yes—the two things. What could the two things mean but her vision, her hope for the world. Dick was coming. He was to be the unknown soldier. Dick was coming, carrying peace in his dead hands. Who else could it be? People, mere people, could not see how that was fitting and inevitable; but she saw it; she knew it; God would take care of it. The unknown soldier would be Dick. He would bring, mystically, certainly, success to the gathering in Washington. And the Lord God would give her a sign. Each day she rose hoping the sign might be that day. Each night she lay down sure of its coming, willing to wait.
“Lynnette, I’ll wear—those clothes, now.”
And when the girl came across the lawn and found her a few days later in new black, with the dramatic gold star on her arm, Lynnette dropped suddenly in a heap.
“Oh,” the woman cried. “You hadn’t given up hope.” And then: “Lynnette—you loved Dicky, too.”
With that Lynnette was standing before her, her head high, a trembling smile on her face. “I always loved him. And now I may tell you—he loved me.” The woman stared. “Yes,” Lynnette said. “I didn’t dream it till that last morning, when he ran across—and he kissed me. He’d never kissed me before. It—it wasn’t just a little kiss to—an old playmate.” The words came difficultly. “It—would be impossible to tell it except to you. But it was—a long kiss. He—didn’t say anything. I’ve thought it over and over and I think he—believed he shouldn’t. Somehow. But that kiss—said it. For me. I know Dick—loved me.”
The woman caught the small figure so that the wet eyes could not see her.
“My Lynnette!” Never on earth should the child know the true story of Dick’s kiss.
Then it was November and she went to Washington. It meant saving money for months, but there was no question; the journey was as inevitable as death. Likely the Lord waited in Washington with that sign which she would know when it came. Many American women are tall and slender, with lines of distinction; this was one of them. In her sombre dress with sheer white at neck and wrists, with the shadowy veil falling and lifting about her shoulders and accenting her white hair, with her lithe young movement, and with that touch of mysticism, of other-worldness in eyes that shone jewel-gray from a carved face, she was an arresting person. In great Washington, packed with all human sorts, people turned to look at her.