And then there was Leonard Boyce. I naturally had him in my head, when I used the words "at last."
"You don't seem very enthusiastic," said Betty.
"You've taken me by surprise," said I. "I'm not young enough to be familiar with these sudden jerks."
"You thought it was Major Boyce."
"I did, Betty. True, you've said nothing about it to me for ever so long, and when I have asked you for news of him your answers have shewed me that all was not well. But you've never told me, or anyone, that the engagement was broken off."
Her young face was set sternly as she looked into the fire.
"It's not broken off—in the formal sense. Leonard thought fit to let it dwindle, and it has dwindled until it has perished of inanition." She flashed round. "I'm not the sort to ask any man for explanations."
"Boyce went out with the first lot in August," I said. "He has had seven awful months. Mons and all the rest of it. You must excuse a man in the circumstances for not being aux petits soins des dames. And he seems to be doing magnificently—twice mentioned in dispatches."
"I know all that," she said. "I'm not a fool. But the war has nothing to do with it. It started a month before the war broke out. Don't let us talk of it."
She threw the end of her cigarette into the fire and lit a fresh one. I accepted the action as symbolical. I dismissed Boyce, and said:—