"Well, it isn't exactly like abandonment, seeing that you could go home to your father and mother in a taxicab."
She stared at him in horror.
"So you don't want me for your wife! You've changed your mind! You're tired of me already! Only an hour together, and you're sick of your bargain! You're anxious to get rid of me! You——"
"Oh, honey, I want you more than anything else on earth, but I'm a soldier, dearie, a mere lieutenant in the regular army, and I'm the slave of the Government. I've gone through West Point, and they won't let me resign respectably and if I did, we'd starve. They wouldn't accept my resignation, but they'd be willing to courtmartial me and dismiss me the service in disgrace. Then you wouldn't want to marry me—and I shouldn't have any way of supporting you if you did. I only know one trade, and that's soldiering."
"Don't call it a trade, beloved, it's the noblest profession in all the world, and you're the noblest soldier that ever was, and in a year or two you'll be the biggest general in the army."
He could not afford to shatter such a devout illusion or quench the light of faith in those beloved and loving eyes. He tacitly admitted his ability to be promoted commander-in-chief in a year or two. He allowed that glittering possibility to remain, used it as a basis for argument.
"Then, dearest, you must help me to do my duty."
She clasped his upper arm as if it were an altar and she an Iphigenia about to be sacrificed to save the army. And she murmured with utter heroism:
"I will! Do what you like with me!"
He squeezed her hand between his biceps and his ribs and accepted the offering in a look drenched with gratitude. Then he said, matter-of-factly: