“Do you live far?”
“Yes.”
“Then stay—please.”
She drew her chair closer. They tried to tell each other of what they had been, but this didn’t prosper. The peculiar thing was that their history seemed to begin from now—all was far and unimportant but this. Morning, moreover, did not mean to spoil the primary idea in her mind of his being an American soldier; though all his recent history impinged upon the one fact that he wasn’t.... He tried to hold her face in his mind with shut eyes, but it was a forced and unfair picture when mentally dragged there.... The thunder increased and the rain.
“Once when I was little,” she said, “I was alone in the house when a storm came, and I was so frightened that day—that I never could be since, in just the same way.”
Perfect revelation. Something in him wished she were pretty. She was such a shy and shadowy creature. He called to mind the girls he had known—coarse and tawdry lot, poor things. Betty Berry was all that they were not; yet some of them were prettier. He could see their faces quite distinctly, and this startled him, because shutting his eyes from full gaze at this girl, he could not see her twice the same.... The weather cleared. They were together in silence for moments at a time. She became more and more like a wraith when the natural dusk thickened.
“Was it hard for you to knock and speak—that first moment?”
“Yes.”
“Do—do any of the soldiers ever misunderstand?”
“No——”