He sat late, happily. If only he could get past the doctor to-morrow!
That's the way! But on the following evening the way was not to be recaptured. The old way was restored. He was enormously cast down by his rejection. When he got back that night he went straight in to her. "I say, they've rejected me. They won't have me." His face was working. "It's that cursed heart."
She slightly puckered her brows. "Oh--d'you know, for the minute I couldn't think what on earth you were talking about. Were you rejected? Well, I must say I'm glad. Up at the Knitting League Mrs. Turner was saying her son saw you at the recruiting office after you were rejected and that it was into the ranks you were going. You never told me that. I must say I don't think you ought to have thought about the ranks without telling me. And I wouldn't have liked it. I wouldn't have liked it at all. I think you ought to be very thankful you were rejected. I'm sure I am."
He said flatly, "_Why_ are you? Thankful--good lord--you don't know--what do you mean, I ought to be thankful?"
"Because you ought to be an officer, if you go at all. It's not the place for you in your position. And apart from anything else--" She gave her sudden burst of laughter.
He felt arise within him violent and horrible feelings about her. "What are you laughing at?"
"Well, do just imagine what you'd look like in private soldier's clothing!" She laughed very heartily again.
Up in his room he began a long letter to Nona, pouring out to her all his feelings about this second rejection. He was writing to her--and hearing from her--regularly and frequently now. It was his only vent in the oppression of these frightful days. She said that it was hers, too.
After that letter of hers, at the outbreak of the war, in which she had said that she thanked God for him that he had delayed her decision to unchain their chains and to join their lives, no further reference had been made by either to that near touch of desire's wand. It was, as he had said it should be, as though her letter had never been written. And in her letters she always mentioned Tony. She wrote to Tony every day, she told him; and there were few of her letters but mentioned a parcel of some kind sent to her husband. Tony never wrote. Sometimes, she said, there came a scrap from him relative to some business matter she must see to; but never any response to her daily budget of gossip--"the kind of news I know he likes to hear"--or any news of himself and his doings.