The Return of the Soldier

Excerpt: ...hastily: "Oh, don't trouble about an umbrella." "I'll maybe need it walking home," she pondered. "But the car will bring you back." "Oh, that will be lovely," she said, and laughed nervously, looking very plain. "Do you know, I know the way we're coming together is terrible, but I can't think of a meeting with Chris as anything but a kind of treat. I've got a sort of party feeling now." As she held the gate open for me she looked back at the house. "It's a horrid little house, isn't it?" she asked. She evidently desired sanction for a long-suppressed discontent. "It isn't very nice," I agreed. "They put cows sometimes into the field at the back," she went on, as if conscientiously counting her blessings. "I like that; but otherwise it isn't much." "But it's got a very pretty name," I said, laying my hand on the raised metal letters that spelled "Mariposa" across the gate. "Ah, isn't it!" she exclaimed, with the smile of the inveterate romanticist. "It's Spanish, you know, for butterfly." Once we were in the automobile, she became a little sullen with shyness, because she felt herself so big and clumsy, her clothes so coarse, against the fine upholstery, the silver vase of Christmas roses, and all the deliberate delicacy of Kitty's car. She was afraid of the chauffeur, as the poor are always afraid of men-servants, and ducked her head when he got out to start the car. To recall her to ease and beauty I told her that though Chris had told me all about their meeting, he knew nothing of their parting, and that I wished very much to hear what had happened. In a deep, embarrassed voice she began to tell me about Monkey Island. It was strange how both Chris and she spoke of it as though it were not a place, but a magic state which largely explained the actions performed in it. Strange, too, that both of them should describe meticulously the one white hawthorn that stood among the poplars by the ferry-side. I suppose a thing that one has looked at with...