“Do you think so, darling?”
“You may be thinking you can go back to that chap at home. But perhaps you'll find you don't care for him any more, and you'll make yourself miserable, and him too.”
“I've thought about it a lot, Lanny. We do what we think is right — and then we go off and spend many a lonely hour wondering if we didn't make a mistake.”
“I'm judging by the way I am with that English girl I told you about.”
“You can't forget her?”
“I've tried to, and I ought to, but I just don't.”
“I suppose that's what's the matter between us,” reflected Penelope. “There's a German poem that tells about a youth who loved a maiden who had chosen another.”
“I know — Heine. And whom it just touches, his heart breaks in two.”
“I don't suppose there'll ever be a remedy for that,” said the girl.
They sat listening to the concertina player, who was evidently a returned poilu; he played their songs, which Lanny knew from Marcel and the other mutilés. Many of them dealt with love, and as a rule were sad; the toughest old campaigner would sit with a mist of tears in his eyes, hearing about the girl he had left behind him and wouldn't see again. Lanny told Penelope what was in these songs, and with echoes of them in their ears they strolled to the car and drove back to the city. Afterward, it was just as she had said — they both wondered if they hadn't made a mistake.