He caught up the paper again, and lifted the glasses before his eyes. “It says here—in the Press, June the twelfth—‘Thus have a little energy, promptitude and bravery in the beginning thwarted a movement which, had it been suffered to mature, might have been fraught with shame and disaster to our arms.’ And perfectly correct, perfectly, perfectly.” He folded the straight bows of his spectacles and slid them into his upper waistcoat pocket. “I don’t for the life of me see why Tyler was summoned back. There is absolutely no threat of invasion, now.”

He squeezed Irene’s arm as he went past her, and through the doorway into the hall: a tall, stooped man slightly lame in one foot, and walking always with his toes turned in. “It says here in the Press, Tyler—” The closing door deadened his words.

Ty’s going back, said the woman. She leaned against the library table; the carved edge of it squeezed the limber hoops against her body … He’s going back. Maybe he’ll be killed. Poor Ty. And vomiting at night, that way—so often. Oh, ghastly, ghastly. What would he have been like, if the war had never happened? Would we have loved each other?… It doesn’t matter, now, because the war has happened … He’s cruel, but he cannot help being cruel. The cruelty is a congenital part of his selfishness, and can’t be cut away or ameliorated.

I made my bed … She flailed the words out of her brain … I made it. Now I’ve got to lie in it, whether with a coughing, cursing man who hates himself as much as he does the rest of us, or whether I lie there alone after he is dead.

“Irene,” her father-in-law called.

She opened the door. Mrs. Fanning was rubbing her cheek against Tyler’s shoulder and making the same grunting noise which she had made before. She turned her tiny, bleary eyes toward the girl. “Your poor little wife, Tyler. Your poor little wife. She just can’t bear to see you go—”

“I can’t stand a lot of slop,” Tyler said. He pushed his mother aside and picked up the knapsack. “You going to the depot with us, Irene?”

“Yes. I’ll get my hat and parasol.”

She joined the two men in the carriage. Mrs. Fanning leaned beside the porch railing, crying, tearing down the trumpet-vine as she clutched at it for support. “Mother!” Mr. Fanning shook his head at her. “It’s our boy’s duty, my dear. His place is at the front with his regiment, suffering the fortunes of war for good or ill. We shall pray that it be for good.”

Demon groaned from his high seat. “Aaamen.” He nodded his white poll, the tiny kinks of it glistening like spun glass.