She made herself ready. As he lifted her he felt her body shudder, and instinctively he thought that she was going to cry. He did not think he understood it. She held him tightly as he carried her to bed, and then, as he put her down gently, she looked up at him, teary, smiling. “I missed you. I love you. Are you going to tease me?” He shook his head. “Give it, then,” she said softly. “Let me be your good wife.”

They were different with each other and knew it and did not try to force themselves. Four weeks was not enough time. They were careful but not like strangers. He did not know if she really looked and smelled and tasted different or if his mind had altered the things it had had to remember. But she loved him somehow, and somehow his happiness in being with her was real. It was a joy settled on a very strange sorrow, and he knew that if it troubled him, it troubled her, and he said nothing about it. What she had to overcome to be a wife to a changed man was enough to make him weep; it made him love her more. They did not have the time to clear away the tension of all the things they needed to discuss, yet they gave to each other. It seemed to him that she gave more than he did. The idea that he was on a rest from risking his life was an unrealistic way of seeing it. She saw it that way, and thus had no rest herself. In no sense were his needs subjugated, while hers were. He had had the option of transferring to the United States and had turned it down. Now he wished he had taken it. She had written nothing about it; perhaps she had been as blind as he had been to their needs before he had come home.