“Women know. So many boys come home—like those on the Sickles whom one is not allowed to see. I have watched them going out, too. They don’t know why they go. They don’t expect to find a new country, and yet it seems as if they must go and look. And many come home so numbed with loneliness that they have forgotten what they need.”
“Then women know what boys—men are?”
She smiled, and seemed listening—her lips pursed, her eyes like a cloudy dawn, turned from him slightly. What did she hear continually that did not come to him?
“I mean the men,” he added, “whom the world calls its bravest—the gaunt explorers and fighters—do women know what boys they are?”
“I don’t know those whom the world calls its bravest.”
“I think I needed to have you come,” he said, “but I didn’t know it.”
The hush was in the room again. Morning felt like a little boy—and as if she were a child with braids behind. They felt wonderful things, but could only talk sillinesses.... There was something different about her every time he looked. It seemed if she were gone; he could not summon her face to mind. He did not understand it then.
It had grown quite a little darker before they noticed. The far rumble of thunder finally made them see a storm gathering.
“You won’t go until it’s over?”
“It might be better for me to go now—before it begins.”