She had decided at once that she liked Christopher. He still wore his
uniform, and had the look of a soldier. But it wasn't that--it was the
things he had been saying ever since the soup was served. No one had
talked of the war as he talked of it. There had been other doctors whose
minds had been on arms and legs--amputated; on wounds and shell
shock--And there had been a few who had sentimentalized. But Christopher
had seemed neither to resent the frightfulness nor to care about the
moral or spiritual consequences. He had found in it all a certain beauty
of which he spoke with enthusiasm--"A silver dawn, and a patch of Blue
Devils like smoke against it--;" ... "A blood-red sunset, and a lot of
airmen streaming across--"
He painted pictures, so that Anne saw battles as if a great brush had
splashed them on an invisible canvas. There were just four at the
table--the two men, Anne, and her second cousin, Jeanette Ware, who
lived the year round in the Connecticut house, and was sixty and
slightly deaf, but who wore modern clothes and had a modern mind.
It was not yet dark, and the light of the candles in sconces and on the
table met the amethyst light that came through, the wide-flung lattice.
Anne's summer gown was something very thin in gray, and she wore an
Indian necklace of pierced silver beads. Christopher had sent it to her
as a wedding-present and she had always liked it.