“I can’t go back now. I’ll go on with you to Trenton.... I have thought so much of meeting you.... When the men came that day to the Armory they showed me everything that seemed good then—fame and money waiting in New York. It seemed that it couldn’t wait another day—that I must go that night.... When the train started (it was like this in Oakland) I thought of you—of you, back in ’Frisco and coming to the Armory in the morning. It broke me. But I wasn’t right—not normal. I had worked like a madman—wounds and all. I worked like a madman in New York——”
She put her hand on his. Her listening centered him. That was it—as if he had not been whirling true before.... Her hand, her listening, and he was himself—eager to give her all that was real.
“It’s so good to have you here,” she said in a low, satisfied way. “Will you be able to get a train back all right?”
“Yes.” Now he thought of Charley and his sister.
“It was such a good little thing that brought me to you,” he said. “One of the little things that I never thought of before,” he told her hurriedly.
“They are very wonderful—those little things, as you call them.... A person is so safe in doing them——”
“I must tell Duke Fallows about that,” he added. “About that word ‘safe,’ as you just said it.... Did you read his story?”
“About the Ploughman?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, it was wonderful!” Betty Berry said. “He made me see it. It was almost worth a war to make people see that——”