“You’re not so very ravenous,” said Jane at length, “after all.”
“No,” said Stephen, “I’m not. I came in under false pretences.”
Jane looked up at him quickly.
“I came, Jane,” said Stephen, “to—to talk to you again.”
“To—talk to me?” said Jane faintly.
“To talk to you about—us,” said Stephen.
“I don’t think you’d better,” said Jane.
“Jane,” said Stephen, “I’m not getting over you—I’m not getting over you at all. I—I care more than ever.”
“Oh, Stephen,” said Jane pitifully, “don’t say that.”
“Do you want me to get over you?” asked Stephen.
Jane pondered a moment, in silence. Life would seem strangely empty without Stephen.
“N—no,” she said honestly. “I—I don’t think I do.”
“Well, then,” said Stephen eagerly, “don’t you think that you—you’re beginning to care?”
“I don’t know,” said Jane.
“Jane,” said Stephen very persuasively, “you can’t go on like this forever. You said yourself you didn’t feel settled. You—you’ll have to marry some time. Wouldn’t you—couldn’t you—?” He paused, his eyes on hers.
“Stephen,” said Jane very miserably, “I don’t know.”
“You would know,” cried Stephen earnestly, “if you’d just let me teach you.”
“Teach me what?” said Jane.
“Teach you what it’s like—to love,” said Stephen simply.
“Teach me,” thought Jane. There was a moment of silence.
“Love isn’t taught,” said Jane finally.
Stephen’s eyes had never left hers.
“Jane,” he said solemnly, “you don’t know.”
Jane shook her head. She couldn’t explain. But she knew. Love was no hothouse flower, forced to reluctant bud. Love was a weed that flashed unexpectedly into bloom on the roadside. Love was not fanned to flame. Love was a leaping fire, sprung from a casual spark, a fire that wouldn’t be smothered, a fire that—
“Stephen,” said Jane, “I’m sure I don’t love you. I’ll never marry you unless I do.”
“But you think,” said Stephen still eagerly, “you think perhaps you might—”
“I don’t know,” said Jane.
Stephen stood up abruptly.
“I’ll ask you and ask you,” said Stephen, “until some day—”
Jane rose and put out her hand.
“I wish I could love you,” said Jane. “I’d like to.”
“Just keep on feeling that way,” said Stephen hopefully. “You didn’t talk like this last May.”
“Good night,” said Jane.
“Good night,” said Stephen.
Jane stood quite quietly by the candlelit table until she heard the front door open and close. Then she blew out the candles. She turned out the hall light and tiptoed very silently upstairs in the darkness. Nevertheless, she heard her mother’s door open expectantly. Mrs. Ward’s eyes wandered critically over her.
“We had a grand time,” said Jane very firmly. “The ice was quite cut up, but Muriel and Bert were there.” She walked on to her bedroom. At the door she turned. She abandoned herself to fiction. “Stephen taught Muriel the figure eight. I’m quite getting to like Bert Lancaster.” She heard her mother’s door close softly. Jane turned up her light. She laughed a little excitedly, to herself. It was nice to be loved. It was nice to be loved by Stephen.
IV
I
“This,” said Mr. Ward, “means war.” He looked very seriously across the dining-room table at his wife and daughter. On the shining damask cloth at his elbow several copies of the evening papers flaunted their thick black headlines. Jane could see them from where she sat. “U.S. Battleship Maine Blown Up in Havana Harbor.” “Three Hundred and Five Men Killed or Injured.” “President McKinley Demands Inquiry.”
Jane looked at her father very solemnly.
“War,” thought Jane. It was somehow unthinkable. War couldn’t be visualized in that quiet candlelit room. No one said anything more. The hoarse, raucous voices of newsboys, crying the last extras on the disaster, punctuated the silence. Jane could hear them blocks away, echoing across the silent city. Newsboys were crying extras like that, thought Jane, in every large city in the world. In New York and London and Berlin and Paris—Paris where André might hear them—newsboys were shouting “U.S. battleship Maine blown up in Havana harbor.” War with Spain. War—after, her father had just said, thirty-three long years of peace.
“I think,” said Mrs. Ward finally, “that someone will do something. There will never be another war between civilized people.”
“The Spaniards aren’t civilized,” said Mr. Ward. “Their Cuban atrocities have proved that.”
“They’re a very powerful nation,” said Mrs. Ward.
“They’re a very tricky one,” said her husband. “But we’ll free Cuba if it takes every young man in America.”
“I hope,” said Mrs. Ward severely, “you won’t talk that way to Robin. I think a married man, with a child, should not be encouraged to think that his duty lies away from his home.”
“Robin,” said Mr. Ward calmly, “is the best judge of his own duty.”
“John,” said Mrs. Ward excitedly, “Isabel isn’t strong. If she were left with that baby—”
“Isabel,” said Mr. Ward, “will have to take her chance with the rest of us.” Then he paused a moment and considered his wife’s worried face. “We’re a long way from enlistments yet, Lizzie.”
“And of course,” said Mrs. Ward hopefully, “the bachelors will all go first.”
“The bachelors,” thought Jane. Would she live to see young men marching out heroically behind the colours to fight the Spaniards—to kill—and be killed—over Cuba—which meant nothing to them—and less to her. Would she live to see—perhaps—Stephen—
“No one will go for months,” said Mr. Ward. “Congress will talk about this inquiry ’til there isn’t an insurrectionist alive in Cuba.”
Jane sincerely hoped that Congress would. She didn’t care at all about the insurrectionists. She was going over to Muriel’s that evening to play egg football, around the dining-room table. Muriel loved egg football. Stephen and Jane thought it was very funny to see her pretty face grow red and distended in her frantic efforts to blow the eggshell over the line. Jane’s mother and Isabel thought that she ought to give it up now. They said it wasn’t quite prudent, with the baby coming. Jane had no opinion on that. It would be an amusing party. Jane rose from her chair.
“Can Minnie walk over with me?” she said. The February night
