“Do you really want to tell me?”
“No. But I've got to. That's all.”
He told her. He made no case for himself. Indeed, some of it Delight understood far better than he did himself. He said nothing against Marion; on the contrary, he blamed himself rather severely. And behind his honest, halting sentences, Delight read his own lack of understanding. She felt infinitely older than this tall, honest-eyed boy in his stained uniform—older and more sophisticated. But if she had understood the Marion Hayden situation, she was totally at a loss as to Anna.
“But I don't understand!” she cried. “How could you make love to her if you didn't love her?”
“I don't know. Fellows do those things. It's just mischief—some sort of a devil in them, I suppose.”
When he reached the beating and Anna's flight, however, she understood a little better.
“Of course you had to stand by her,” she agreed.
“You haven't heard it all,” he said quietly. “When I'm through, if you get up and leave me, I'll understand, Delight, and I won't blame you.”
He told her the rest of the story in a voice strained with anxiety. It was as though he had come to a tribunal for judgment. He spared her nothing, the dinner at the road-house with Rudolph at the window, his visit to Anna's room, and her subsequent disappearance.
“She told the Department of Justice people that Rudolph found her that night, and, took her home. She was a prisoner then, poor little kid. But she overheard her father and Rudolph plotting to blow up the mill. That's where I came in, Delight. He was crazy at me. He was a German, of course, and he might have done it anyhow. But Rudolph told him a lot of lies about me, and—he did it. When I think about it all, and about Joey, I'm crazy.”