“Poor old fellow!” the Inger tried to say, softly—and the grunting mounted to a snarl.
When they had fed him, the Inger drew Lory out into the quiet of the little garden.
“You can’t stand that,” he said. “I won’t have you stand that. You’ve got to get some place an’ get out o’ this.”
She looked down the dusk of the garden, and he was surprised to see that she was smiling a little.
“You don’t know,” she said. “With that—or hard work—or anything else—I’ll always think it’s heaven to what I thought had to happen.”
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.
“I guess it just happened so,” the Inger said. “You’ve all come buying good clothes, I bet.”
She did not smile, but sat looking across the room. The wife of the soda fountain man and two women from outside leaned there, talking.
“Wouldn’t it be funny,” Lory said, “if the women all come here the way I come—unexpected?”
He did not hear her. He was reading eagerly down the first column of the page:
“Answer Still Delayed. President Not Yet Ready to Give Out Statement. Mass Meeting Resolutions produce Profound Effect. Foreign Pressure Increasing. All-Night Cabinet Meeting Likely—”