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Back The Fall of Valor Save as PDF
Chapters (51)
  1. Introduction by Michael Bronski
  2. BEGINNING
  3. II
  4. III
  5. IV
  6. V
  7. VI
  8. VII
  9. VIII
  10. IX
  11. X
  12. XI
  13. XII
  14. XIII
  15. MIDDLE
  16. II
  17. III
  18. IV
  19. V
  20. VI
  21. VII
  22. VIII
  23. IX
  24. X
  25. XI
  26. XII
  27. XIII
  28. XIV
  29. XV
  30. XVI
  31. XVII
  32. XVIII
  33. XIX
  34. XX
  35. END
  36. II
  37. III
  38. IV
  39. V
  40. VI
  41. VII
  42. VIII
  43. IX
  44. X
  45. XI
  46. XII
  47. XIII
  48. XIV
  49. XV
  50. XVI
  51. About the Author

If he had been so moved by a picture in the paper as to go to the trouble of cutting it out and saving it (the picture was a very moving one indeed, no one could have blamed him), why hadn’t he said anything about it? But that was a secondary consideration; the first was that her husband was troubled and secret. She knew he had long been obsessed by the war; she did not know what private thoughts or emotions possessed him during those midnight hours spent in his study. As she settled the blotter and looked to see that his desk was as he had left it, she knew instinctively that she would never speak to him of finding the clipping unless he spoke of it first.

The memory of that discovery puzzled and disturbed her more than she could easily have said; she hated knowing anything about her husband which he had not told her himself: it was as if she had uncovered an emotion so private that she had no right even to know of it. Here was one more instance of the fact that they were drifting away from one another: living together as closely as ever, yet worlds of emotion apart. Whatever saddened or troubled him, she wished she knew of it. But this was something he apparently did not want, else why would he have kept to himself such a simple thing as a clipping from a newspaper? More than ever she dreaded meeting him this afternoon, and at once hated herself for the thought, for this was what they had been looking forward to for so long. The whole unspoken intention of the holiday had been to bring them together again in a kind of second honeymoon—they had even purposely chosen a period in which there would be a full moon. But as the train neared its destination she had the awful feeling that two individualities (formerly one, but now separate) were moving rapidly toward one another out of an almost chemical necessity; and inevitably, beyond her power to control it, there was bound to be but one result when they met: collision, and explosion.

IX

IX

“Woods Hole—all out!”

In the pleasant confusion that followed, everyone forgot everyone else. The friendships of the journey were abandoned in the business of the moment, the matter of luggage and things to attend to. John Grandin felt a kind of excitement he had not felt in years, the excitement of arriving at a new place. Added to this was the pleasure of knowing that in a few moments, only a very few moments more, he would be seeing Ethel.