"Why should you want to be friends with me?"
"Because I can't help it, for one thing," she cried; "and for another--"
Turning away wearily she began to move toward the door. "Of course if
you don't want to, I can't urge it, and so must learn to get along by
myself."
Something in the last phrase prompted me to say:
"Is there anything specially wrong?"
"No; only everything specially wrong. If you had come back to the hotel
with me I could have told you."
"Can't you tell me now? Is it about--about Stroud?"
"Oh no, Billy. Can't you forget about that? I have. He's dropped out
of my existence. That was all a mistake, like the other things."
"What other things?"
"All the other things." She pointed to the big word "PEACE" staring at
us from a chair to which I had thrown the newspaper. "Look at that.
Doesn't it make all the last five years seem unreal, like a nightmare
after you've got up? Well, that's the way I feel now ... about ...
about--"
"About me?"
"Of course. I never should have thought it at all, only that Wolf and
Dick Stroud, and even the military authorities-- But at heart I
_didn't_ believe them--"
"Do you mean that--?"
She nodded without waiting for me to finish the question.
"But I want it very plainly, Vio."
"I'll tell you as plainly as you like, Billy, but--but not now. I'm too
worried."
"But what about? Is it--?"
"Oh, everything!" she burst out, desperately. "Money for one thing.
Didn't you see how shabby the house was, and run down?" The sobs began
to come freely now, and without restraint. "And--and Lulu Averill has a
little boy, a perfect darling, and our little Bobby--"
"I'll go back with you to the hotel," I said, quietly, "only,
don't--don't cry here, with people coming in and out."
She dried her eyes, drew down her veil, and took her sunshade from a
corner. Picking up the paper she had brought, I folded it and slipped
it into my pocket. I began to wonder if it might not prove a souvenir.
On the way to the main exit we passed through a corridor lined with
cases of old silver.
"Do you think your boys would like a day with those things?" she asked,
with the slight convulsion of her throat that a child has after tears.
"I'm sure they would."
"I could--I could take them, some day, when you didn't want to go, if
you'd let me. It's one of the few things I know something about."
"I'm afraid it would bore you."
She paused for just an instant. "Bore me? Billy, nothing will ever bore
me again so long as you--you let me--"
As she could say no more we resumed our walk.
Out in the open a boy rushed up to us, a Slavic creature with huge
questioning eyes.
"Peace, mister! Peace, miss! Buy one! Great historic 'casion!"
They were like doves, all up and down the avenue, white, fluttering,
bearing the one blessed, magical word. They were in motor-cars,
carriages, and on the tops of omnibuses--all white, all fluttering, all
blessed, and all magical. Up and down and everywhere the cry burst from
hundreds of raucous little throats:
"Peace! _Peace_! PEACE!"
"It's like coming out into a new world, isn't it?" I said.
"It _is_ a new world, for me. Do you remember saying that day when you
first came home that the new world made the war? Now it's made
something else, in which it seems to me there'll be just as much
struggle called for, only with a difference. Then the hard things were
done to break us down; now they may be just as hard, only they'll be to
build us up. The East isn't farther from the West, is it, than these
two motives? I've never wanted to build up anything in my life; but now
I feel as if--"
Once more we walked silently among the doves, listening to that throaty,
lusty cry that was sheer music:
"Peace! _Peace_! PEACE!"
We had come to that avenue in the park sacred to little boys and girls,
when she said:
"He's a darling, Lulu Averill's baby; and they--quite understand each
other--now."
This second reference prompted me to give her a long sidewise look, but
she did not return it.
"Perhaps--" I ventured.
"Oh, Billy!"
It was barely a sigh, but for the minute it was enough for me, as she
pressed forward, with veiled profile set, like one gazing into the
future.