You’re the only man I can never pretend with. You’ve just about—! I don’t know what you’ve done to me.”
“And I don’t know what you’ve done to me, Audrey. Something. I’ve always thought you were a fraud. A complicated fraud, like your dad. Acting. Never real, never sincere, because acting was an obsession. I just about couldn’t stand it—but I always barely could. You see I don’t live just for loving a woman. Not now. Not—ever. Even if I loved you with all my heart and all my life. I still—”
Audrey said, “Goodness.” She wrinkled her nose. “What talk! I understand that! A man who felt any other way wouldn’t be more than a third of a man. One third of a man—two thirds of a ghost. What the hell do you imagine made me fall for you? Why do you suppose I’ve been chasing you like a—a—a little beagle?”
“I thought it was that obsession. You had to prove something.”
She nodded. “Sure. I still do. I have to prove I love you. I have to prove I always will. Now—you’re going to roar away again. To England. So I’ve got to go to England.”
“What!”
“It’ll be a terrible nuisance. I’m broke. I’ll have to volunteer for some kind of job. Borrow money from someone. Vamp the State Department. Get Dad’s friends to high-pressure people. I’ll probably wind up in the Land Army, dressed like you, pitching hay. Instead of—”
Jimmie’s smile was absent-minded. “You really mean that, don’t you? You’re really going to England!”
“If I have to. You ought not to make me though, Jimmie. The only two men I revere are going to be there. You. And Larry, if he still—exists. You say we go to England—so that’s where we go. When I heard about it I was sore for a minute. I thought it was quitting. I thought it was beneath you. After all, you were born an American citizen. If Americans are behaving as badly as you say I thought you ought to stick around and help straighten them out. But I was sore only for a second. If you decide it’s England—I start looking at the travel folders. No matter what I get in, I could see you—once in a while.”
Jimmie thought. “You mean, you believed I ought to stay here, and you nevertheless decided that because I was going there you would?”