“... So now she knows,” was the end of what he heard—and in that instant his eye caught the words engraved on the cross, République Française, and the full meaning of its being there in Corey’s hand burst suddenly upon him.
The new French decoration! The Croix de Guerre!
“You’ve been there?” he managed to say. “You’ve been over there?”
“How else would I get it?” said Corey, with a kind of abandon, as if he were confessing now to some fullness of shame. “You see, she’s right. I couldn’t resist.”
Mr. Ewing was lost. “Resist what?”
“This!” Corey closed his fingers now on the Croix. “A new decoration!”
And then, as if every atom of his great, strong body had suddenly succumbed to some long-growing exhaustion, Corey dropped down into a chair and threw out his arm across the table as if he would put away from him as far as possible that offending decoration.
“But when?”—Mr. Ewing found himself reiterating—“when—when—you haven’t been away—”
“Oh, yes,” said Corey. “You remember, in August.”
And here Mr. Ewing confessed that he thought for a moment that Corey must be hopelessly mad. There was the question of time, and a dozen other questions besides. It seemed out of the realm of possibility, out of the realm of reason.