“At least I appreciate your point of view,” Major Thomson admitted, with a faint sigh.
“Don’t be such a dear old stick,” Geraldine laughed. “I want you to like him because I find him so interesting. You see, as he gets to know one a little better he doesn’t seem to mind talking about the war. You others will scarcely say a word of what you have seen or of what is being done out there. I like to be told things by people who have actually seen them. He happened to be ten minutes early this evening and he gave me a most fascinating description of some skirmishing near La Bassee.”
“You must remember,” Thomson told her, “that personally I do not, in an ordinary way, see a great deal of fighting until the whole show is over. It may be a fine enough panorama when an attack is actually taking place, but there is nothing very inspiring in the modern battlefield when the living have passed away from it.”
“Really, I almost wish that you were a soldier, too,” she declared. “Your work seems to me so horribly gruesome. Come along, you know you are going to take me to dinner. Think of something nice to say. I really want to be amused.”
“I will make a suggestion, then,” he remarked as they took their places. “I don’t know whether you will find it amusing, though. Why shouldn’t we do like so many of our friends, and get married?”
She stared at him for a moment. Then she laughed heartily.
“Hugh,” she exclaimed, “I can see through you! You’ve suddenly realised that this is your chance to escape a ceremony and a reception, and all that sort of thing. I call it a most cowardly suggestion.”
“It rather appeals to me,” he persisted. “It may be,” he added, dropping his voice a little, “because you are looking particularly charming this evening, or it may be--”
“Or it may be,” he repeated, “a man’s desire to be absolutely sure of the thing he wants more than anything else in the world.”
There was a moment’s silence. As though by some curious instinct which they both shared, they glanced across the table to where Granet had become the centre of a little babble of animated conversation. Geraldine averted her eyes almost at once, and looked down at her plate. There was a shade of uneasiness in her manner.