"I don't know," she said simply; and the tone of her voice said that she did not care. It was as quiet as the harebells when no wind is blowing.
"And I don't know!" Knowlton echoed with a half-sigh. "I don't know where I am going myself. But I shall know in a day or two. Can you be ready in a week, do you think, Diana?"
"Shall you have to go so soon as that?" she asked with a startled look up.
"Pretty near. What of that? You are going with me. It may be to some rough out-of-the-way place; we never can tell; you know we are a sort of football for Uncle Sam to toss about as he pleases; but you are not afraid of being a soldier's wife, Di?"
She looked at him without speaking; a look clear and quiet and glad, like her voice when she spoke. So full of the thought of the reality he suggested, evidently, that she never perceived the occasion for a blush. Her eyes went through him, to the rough country or the frontier post where she could share—and annul—all his harsh experiences.
"What sort of places are those where you might go, Evan?"
"Nearly all sorts on the face of the earth, my beauty. I might be sent to the neighbourhood of one of the great cities; we should have a good time then, Di! I would wait for nothing; I could come and fetch you just as soon as I could get a furlough of a day or two. But they are apt to send us, the young officers, to the hardest places; posts beyond civilisation, out west to the frontier, or south to Texas, or across to the Pacific coast."
"California!" Diana cried.
"California; or Oregon; or Arizona. Yes; why?"
"California is very far off."