We went up to the Wall. The weather was bad, and Walter could not leave the War behind him; he seemed obsessed by it; he could talk of nothing else all the time.
I tried to cheer him up, to tease him a little, and make fun and play as we used to at first; he had liked me to before, but he did not care for it now. He smiled rather absently, and turned back to his book; when he spoke it was only of the advance in Gallipoli.
I felt that it was my fault that I could not cheer him up. I could not feel gay myself; I could not make spontaneous fun, and so it was no good, and I worried about my baby, left for the first time. I kept imagining disasters that were not probable at all. One night I woke up in a fright, and thought that the nurse might have left the tap of the gas fire half on, and the gas be escaping; and another time, I thought that a cat might have jumped into the cot, and the nurse not noticed it. I was jumpy and nervy, I knew it, and so no use to Walter. I thought about Hugo and Guy in France, and George in Gallipoli; and that made it worse.
We sat one day on the hill-side beyond the Wall, where we had often sat before, and looked out to the North. We could see the place when we had walked together, that first day when we had met at the camp and I had gone down with Walter, into the barbarians’ country. It seemed a long time ago. I remembered how exciting it had been, and how I had felt that I had begun to know Walter, and understand him. I knew him much better now, but did I understand him? I slipped my hand through his arm and laid my cheek against his.
‘Dear,’ I said, ‘what has happened to us both? Why are we so dull and sad?’
Walter looked round at me slowly.
‘We are tired, I think,’ he said. ‘That is all and we can’t rest; nobody can rest just now.’
I stroked his hand, I remember; I felt very sorry for Walter; I felt that, perhaps, I had not thought of him enough, in thinking of Eleanor so much. He looked so tired and unhappy now.
‘It would be easier for you if you could fight,’ I said.
He flushed and looked away.