“I suppose so,” said Doggie. Then he had a brilliant idea. “But when the war is over, we’ll remain the same age for ever and ever.”
“I’m sure of it. We’ll still both be in our twenties. Let us suppose the war puts ten years of experience and suffering, and what not, on to our lives. We’ll only then be in our thirties—and nothing possibly can happen to make us grow any older. At seventy we shall still be thirty.”
“You are consoling,” she admitted. “But what if the war had added thirty years to one’s life? What if I felt now an old woman of fifty? But yes, it is quite true. I have the feelings and the disregard of convention of a woman of fifty. If there had been no war, do you think I could have gone among an English army—sans gêne—like an old matron? Do you think a jeune fille française bien élevée could have talked to you alone as I have done the past two days? Absurd. The explanation is the war.”
Doggie laughed. “Vive la guerre!” said he.
“Mais non! Be serious. We must come to an understanding.”
In her preoccupation she forgot the rules laid down for the guidance of jeunes filles bien élevées, and unthinkingly perched herself full on the kitchen table on the corner of which Doggie sat in a one-legged way. Doggie gasped again. All her assumed age fell from her like a garment. Youth proclaimed itself in her attitude and the supple lines of her figure. She was but a girl after all, a girl with a steadfast soul that had been tried in unutterable fires; but a girl appealing, desirable. He felt mighty protective.
“An understanding? All right,” said he.
“I don’t want you to go away and think ill of me—that I am one of those women—les affranchies I think they call them—who think themselves above social laws. I am not. I am bourgeoise to my finger-tips, and I reverence all the old maxims and prejudices in which I was born. But conditions are different. It is just like the priests who have been called into the ranks. To look at them from the outside, you would never dream they were priests—but their hearts and their souls are untouched.”
She was so earnest, in her pathetic youthfulness, to put herself right with him, so unlike the English girls of his acquaintance, who would have taken this chance companionship as a matter of course, that his face lost the smile and became grave, and he met her sad eyes.