“Poor Dan,” Lorraine sobbed, trying to gather all of him in her arms.
“Poor little Lorraine, you can’t understand. A fine mess I’ve been for you anyhow, first trying not to love you, not understanding nor appreciating you; then when Boy came and I knew your worth and my love for you and what a splendid pal Thurley was, but just a pal, and then the war, and now—”
“But I do understand,” she told him swiftly, “I do, indeed.... Dan, you don’t know all that has happened—about me. They’ll tell you fast enough, so let me prepare you. When you were gone, instead of grieving and waiting, I, too, found a primitive part of me ... it was the women all about me that roused it, the women going overseas, making speeches, parading in uniforms—and I deliberately neglected our boy! Yes, I did! Ask father, for he disapproved but I would not listen. It was all something I don’t quite understand now, but a mighty powerful something while it lasted, and it was Thurley who taught me the lesson,” Lorraine continued in her sweet, even voice, neither sparing herself nor softening the details. Finally, she ended,
“Even now, loving you a thousand times harder and adoring Boy, content always to be the homemaker, happy in it, there is, sometimes, a faint longing to go forth and do, what shall I name it? And so, I do understand your primitive part, Dan, and I shall be patient with it.... Perhaps it was worth the making the mistake to be able to understand you.”
He gathered her in his arms. “Lorraine,” he whispered, “we both understand—”
So they sat like two jolly, sentimental ghosts, until dawn filtered through dark clouds, talking as they had never talked before, of intangible, personal doubts and resolves, of many happy things to come and of the mistakes which lay behind.
“You know the feeling, Dan! You have been big and keen enough to analyze it,” Lorraine summarized. “Now help other men to become used to ‘life as usual.’ Thurley calls stay-at-homes and quiet workers ‘gray angels’ because we are considered ineffectual, simply keeping things going. You can be a gray angel, Dan. It’s the most peaceful feeling in the world! Help the boys at Thurley’s Fincherie to be average men, neither heroes nor martyrs, talk to them as only a man who is one of them can talk,—there lies your duty and your salvation.”
“I will,” Dan promised, “if you will talk to me!”