“War changes women, perhaps, as well as men,” he said tenderly.
They sat by the fire in the quiet old room and talked of the future and of all the stages of Robin: as schoolboy, as youth, as budding undergraduate, as man.
“Perhaps he’ll be a soldier-man as his father has been,” said Rosamund.
“Do you wish it?”
She looked at him steadily for a moment. Then she said:
“Yes, if it helps him as I think it has helped you. I expect when men go to fight for their country they go, perhaps without knowing it, to fight just for themselves.”
“I believe everything we do for others, without any thought of ourselves, we do for ourselves,” he said, very seriously.
“Altruism! But then I ought to live in London for you, and you in Welsley for me.”
They both laughed. Nothing had been absolutely decided; and yet it seemed as if through that laughter a decision had been reached about everything really important.