She had come in straight from the garage; there was a light fur of dust on her boots and on the shoulders of her tunic, and on her face and hair. Her hands were black with oil and dirt from her car.
He looked at her, taking it all in: the khaki uniform (it was the first time he had seen her in it), the tunic, breeches and puttees, the loose felt hat turned up at one side, its funny, boyish chin-strap, the dust and dirt of her; and he smiled. His smile had none of the cynical derision which had once greeted her appearances as a militant suffragist.
"And yet," she thought, "if he's consistent, he ought to loathe me now."
"Dorothea. Going to the War," he said.
"Not yet--worse luck."
"Are you going as part of the Canadian contingent from overseas, or what?"
"I wish I was. Do you think they'd take me if I cut my hair off?"
"They might. They might do anything. This is a most extraordinary war."
"It's a war that makes it detestable to be a woman."
"I thought--" For a moment his old ungovernable devil rose in him.