I am
reminded of the "Yank" who had his nose shot off at Chateau Thierry.
He said that now that the Germans didn't have anything visible to
train their artillery on, the war would soon be over. He had lost
his nose but not his sense of the ridiculous. I have managed to
retain both.
Up in that bare, dust-laden room, with the two candles burning
at her elbows, sat Alix. There were tears in her eyes, a wistful
little smile on her lips. She was reading again the clumsy lines
David had written in those long-ago days of adolescence. Now they
meant something to her. They were stilted, commonplace expressions;
she would have laughed at them had they been written by any one else,
and she still would have been vastly amused, even now, were it not
for the revelations contained in his letter. And the postscript,--how
like him to have added that whimsical twist! He wanted her to smile,
even though his heart was hurt.
Ten years! Ten years ago they had sat opposite each other at this
dusty table, their heads bent to the task, their brows furrowed,
their hands reaching out to the same bottle of ink, their souls
athrill with romance. And she was writing of a handsome, incredibly
valiant hero, whilst he--he was writing of her! Time and again his
hand, in seeking the ink, had touched the hand of his heroine,--she
remembered once jabbing her pen into his less nimble finger as she
went impatiently to the fount of romance, and he had exclaimed with
a grimace: "Gee, you must have struck a snag, Alix!" She recalled
the words as of yesterday, almost as of this very moment, and her
arrogant rejoinder, "Well, why can't you keep your hand out of the
way?"
She was always hurting him, and he was always patient.
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