"When can you get away, Delight?" he asked abruptly.
"From here?" She cast an appraising glance over the room. "Right away, I
think. Why?"
"Because I want to talk to you, and I can't talk to you here."
She brought a bright colored sweater and he helped her into it, still
with his mouth set and his eyes a trifle sunken. All about there were
laughing groups of men in uniform. Outside, the parade glowed faintly
in the dusk, and from the low barrack windows there came the glow of
lights, the movement of young figures, voices, the thin metallic notes
of a mandolin.
"How strange it all is," Delight said. "Here we are, you and father and
myself--and even Jackson. I saw him to-day. All here, living different
lives, doing different things, even thinking different thoughts. It's as
though we had all moved into a different world."
He walked on beside her, absorbed in his own thoughts, which were yet
only of her.
"I didn't know you were here," he brought out finally.
"That's because you've been burying yourself. I knew you were here."
"Why didn't you send me some word?"
She stiffened somewhat in the darkness.
"I didn't think you would be greatly interested, Graham."
And again, struggling with his new humility, he was silent. It was not
until they had crossed the parade ground and were beyond the noises of
the barracks that he spoke again.
"Do you mind if I talk to you, Delight? I mean, about myself? I--since
you're here, we're likely to see each other now and then, if you are
willing. And I'd like to start straight."
"Do you really want to tell me?"
"No. But I've got to. That's all."
He told her. He made no case for himself. Indeed, some of it Delight
understood far better than he did himself. He said nothing against
Marion; on the contrary, he blamed himself rather severely. And
behind his honest, halting sentences, Delight read his own lack of
understanding. She felt infinitely older than this tall, honest-eyed
boy in his stained uniform--older and more sophisticated. But if she had
understood the Marion Hayden situation, she was totally at a loss as to
Anna.
"But I don't understand!" she cried. "How could you make love to her if
you didn't love her?"
"I don't know. Fellows do those things. It's just mischief--some sort of
a devil in them, I suppose."
When he reached the beating and Anna's flight, however, she understood a
little better.