“It don’t matter.”
The fire rolled over Anthony. Something wrenched
at his bowels, and he stood there helpless and beaten.
“Come with me, Dot—little loving
Dot. Oh, come with me. I couldn’t
leave you now—”
With a sob she wound her arms around him and let him
support her weight while the moon, at its perennial
labor of covering the bad complexion of the world,
showered its illicit honey over the drowsy street.
Early September in Camp Boone, Mississippi. The
darkness, alive with insects, beat in upon the mosquito-netting,
beneath the shelter of which Anthony was trying to
write a letter. An intermittent chatter over a
poker game was going on in the next tent, and outside
a man was strolling up the company street singing
a current bit of doggerel about “K-K-K-Katy.”
With an effort Anthony hoisted himself to his elbow
and, pencil in hand, looked down at his blank sheet
of paper. Then, omitting any heading, he began:
I can’t imagine what the matter is, Gloria.
I haven’t had a line from you for two weeks
and it’s only natural to be worried—
He threw this away with a disturbed grunt and began
again:
I don’t know what to think, Gloria.
Your last letter, short, cold, without a word of affection
or even a decent account of what you’ve been
doing, came two weeks ago. It’s only natural
that I should wonder. If your love for me isn’t
absolutely dead it seems that you’d at least
keep me from worry—
Again he crumpled the page and tossed it angrily through
a tear in the tent wall, realizing simultaneously
that he would have to pick it up in the morning.
He felt disinclined to try again. He could get
no warmth into the lines—only a persistent
jealousy and suspicion. Since midsummer these
discrepancies in Gloria’s correspondence had
grown more and more noticeable. At first he had
scarcely perceived them. He was so inured to
the perfunctory “dearest” and “darlings”
scattered through her letters that he was oblivious
to their presence or absence. But in this last
fortnight he had become increasingly aware that there
was something amiss.
He had sent her a night-letter saying that he had
passed his examinations for an officers’ training-camp,
and expected to leave for Georgia shortly. She
had not answered. He had wired again—when
he received no word he imagined that she might be
out of town. But it occurred and recurred to
him that she was not out of town, and a series of
distraught imaginings began to plague him. Supposing
Gloria, bored and restless, had found some one, even
as he had. The thought terrified him with its
possibility—it was chiefly because he had
been so sure of her personal integrity that he had
considered her so sparingly during the year.
And now, as a doubt was born, the old angers, the rages
of possession, swarmed back a thousandfold. What
more natural than that she should be in love again?
