“If you hadn’t come,” said Olivia, inwardly glowing at the tribute paid by the indignant youth, “I should have imagined that you looked on last night’s affair as a trumpery incident in the day’s work and went to bed and forgot all about it.”
“That’s impossible,” said he. “I, too, haven’t slept a wink.”
She met and held his eyes longer than she, or anyone else, had held them. Then, half angrily, she felt her cheeks grow hot and red.
“For you, who have faced death a hundred times, last night, as I’ve just said, must be even dull. What was it to the night when you—you know—the sentry—when you were unarmed and you fought with him and you killed him with his own bayonet?”
He snapped his fingers and smiled. “That was unimportant. Whether I lived or died didn’t matter to anybody. It didn’t matter much to me. It was sheer animal instinct. But last night it was you. And that makes a universe of difference.”
Olivia rose, and, with a “You’re not smoking,” offered him a box of cigarettes.
“Yes,” she said, when he had lighted it, with fingers trembling ever so slightly as they held the match, “I suppose a woman does make a difference. We’re always in the way, somehow. Women and children first. Why they don’t throw us overboard at once and let the really useful people save themselves, I could never make out.”
His air of dismay was that of a devotee listening to a saint blaspheme. Her laughter rippled, music to his ears.
“Do you know what I should like to do? Get out of London for a few hours and fill my lungs with air. Richmond Park, for instance.”
“I, too.” He sighed. “If only I had a car!”