“Do what?”
“Hold the pose of youth and joy and happiness?”
“You know it isn’t a pose. I just feel that way, Evans.”
“My dear, I believe you do.”
He limped a little as he walked beside her. He was tall and gaunt. Almost grotesquely tall. Yet when he had gone to war he had not seemed in the least grotesque. He had been tall but not thin, and he had gone in all the glory of his splendid youth.
There was no glory left. He was twenty-seven. He had fought and he would fight again for the same cause. But his youth was dead, except when he was with Jane. She revived him, as he said, like wine.
“I was coming over,” he began, and broke off as a sibilant sound interrupted him.
“Oh, are the cats with you? Well, Rusty must take the road,” he laughed as the little old dog trotted to neutral ground at the edge of the grove. Rusty was friends with Merrymaid, except when there were kittens about. He knew enough to avoid her in days of anxious motherhood.
Jane picked up the kitten. “They would come.”
“All animals follow you. You’re sort of a domestic Circe—with your dogs and chickens and pussy-cats in the place of tigers and lions and leopards.”