Page:The Return of the Soldier (Van Druten).djvu/56

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THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER

Jenny : Yes. She loves him, and he wants her. She’ll come. She’s already said she’ll come, in answer to his letter that Barrett took down this morning.

Kitty : That letter! He was itching to write all last night . . . all the evening he was thinking of her, with us in the room. When he went to bed, I heard him come down again for paper. I saw the light under his door till four o’clock. Oh, yes, she said she would come . . . on the impulse of that letter . . . but when she thinks . . . when she looks in the glass . . . you remember yesterday . . . when she saw him in the garden . . . she wouldn’t stay then. She went away . . . because she was afraid.

Jenny : Not because she was afraid.

Kitty : Why, then?

Jenny : Because of you. Because she thought it was her duty to go, for your sake . . . because Chris was yours, and she couldn’t hurt you.

Kitty : Oh, you’d make the woman out a saint!

Jenny : I almost thought she was.

Kitty : How can you . . . take her part . . . against me?

Jenny : I’m not. You know I’m not.

Kitty : But, then, if she wouldn’t stay yesterday, why to-day?

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