“I mean Bunchy,” she said.
She moved down the path, and following her for a step or two, he noted the dress she was wearing, and the tan of her neck, and her arms in their thin sleeves.
“That’s the dress you had on that day in the desert,” he said suddenly.
“Yes,” she answered. “It’s almost the only dress I’ve got,” she added.
He fell to wondering whether it would be possible for her ever to forgive him now, and come to him, and whether it could ever be as it might have been. Sometime, perhaps, when he came back from the war—if he came.... It was on his lips to make her know. But always the memory of the night on the trail swept him. “I didn’t know no woman I could tell—nor no other decent man.” And then....
She stood still, looking back at the house.
“I wanted,” she said, “to get that newspaper. Did you see what it said about women—about who’s here?”
He had not seen, but he would not let her go back to the kitchen, nor would he go himself. They went round the house, and found a newsstand, and sat over a little table in an ice-cream place.
“Many Women Arrive in Capital,” the headlines said. “Large Number of Women Arrivals at Hotels. Conjecture Washington May Become Shopping Centre of the East.”
“We noticed this morning—we said so this morning,” Lory remembered.