served your purpose. During the terrible years you've
clothed her with your own idealism. You've told yourself that it was for
her that you were fighting. You've created in your heart a person she
never was and hasn't it in her to become. You've thought of her as a
second you, with _your_ sense of honor, _your_ passion for
unselfishness, _your_ patience and experience gained through suffering.
The ideal you've set up for her is contradictory and impossible. Youth
isn't considerate, experienced, unselfish, patient. For those qualities
you have to go to the middle years. I know what I'm talking about, for
I've had three soldier husbands." She said it without self-reproach or
self-glory--as though it were the sort of thing that might happen to any
woman. "You've been finding out the kind of girl she really is since
your return--the kind of girl who prefers General Braithwaite to
yourself and can't discriminate between the temporary and the permanent.
You're disappointed in her. You've discovered already that she isn't the
woman you thought you were loving. You're now only pretending that you
still care for her because life would be too empty without your dream
and because the right woman, for whom you've already renewed your
search, hasn't yet turned up. Somewhere inside you at this moment your
sane self is endorsing every word that I'm saying as true."

"That's not so." His contradiction was spoken fiercely.

"But it is so," the sweet voice persisted. "You yourself have tacitly
owned it."

"How?"

There was the sharpness of alarm in his way of asking. Her assurance had
startled him out of his brief anger.

She laughed softly. "I think we might have tea; it'll restore our
serenity. There's nothing like employing your hands when you want to
keep from losing your temper. A woman learns that, even when she's only
been married once. When she's been married three times," the cornflower
eyes became suddenly innocent, "she knows everything.--Will you touch
the bell? It'll save me getting up.--How, you ask. How do I know that
you've already renewed your searching? To a man who's as head over heels
in love as you profess to be all women, except the one woman, however
beautiful, ought to be hanks of hair and bags of bones. I read your
thoughts when I caught you gazing at my sister's portrait. You were
saying to yourself, 'What if she's the woman!' And you're even
sufficiently detached in your affections to acknowledge attracti