"Well, I don't. But I am coming back."
"Daddy didn't come back."
"But some men do."
"Perhaps God doesn't love you as much as He did Daddy, and He won't want to keep you."
"Perhaps not—"
The things which the child had spoken stayed with Derry all that day. His feeling about death had always been that of a man who has long years before him. He had rather jauntily conceded that some men die young, but that the chances in his case were for a green old age. He might indeed have fifty years before him, and in fifty years one could—get ready—age had to do with serious things, people were peaceful and prepared.
But to get ready now. To face the thing squarely, saying, "I may not come back—there are, indeed, a thousand chances that I shall not come." Lacking those fifty years in which to grow towards the thought of dissolution, what ought one to do? Should a man make himself fit in some special fashion?
There was, too, the thought of those whom he might leave behind. Of Jean—his wife—whom he would leave. She would break her heart—at first. And then—? Would she remember? Would she forget? Would he and those millions of others who had gone down in battle become dim memories—pale shadows against the vivid background of the hurrying world?
He felt that he could not, must not speak of these things to Jean. So he talked of them to Emily.
"If anything should happen to me," he said, "I couldn't, of course, expect that Jean would go on—caring—. And if there should ever be anyone else—I—I should want her to be happy."