“I want you to promise me that you’ll try. Evans, you know we are going to fight it out together....”
His eyes did not meet hers. “Do you think I’d let you? Well, you think wrong.” He began to walk rapidly, so that it was hard to keep pace with him. “I’m not worth it.”
And now quite as suddenly as she had cried, she laughed, and the laugh had a break in it. “You’re worth everything that America has to give you.” She told him of the things she had thought of in church. “You are as much of a hero as any of them.”
He shook his head. “All that hero stuff is dead and gone, my dear. We idealize the dead, but not the living.”
It was true and she knew it. But she did not want to admit it. “Evans,” she said, and laid her cheek for a moment against the rough sleeve of his coat, “don’t make me unhappy. Let me help.”
“You don’t know what you are asking. You’d grow tired of it. Any woman would.”
“Why look ahead? Can’t we live for each day?”
She had lighted a flame of hope in him. “If I might——” eagerly.
“Why not? Begin right now. What are you thankful for, Evans?”
“Not much,” uneasily.