THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER
Jenny : Uncle Arthur sent you . . . your father . . . to look after the mines. They were in a bad way and you saved them. You don’t remember?
Chris : No. But it doesn’t matter. So I went to Mexico. And then I met Kitty and . . . oh, I can’t believe all this . . . that it’s all happened to me, and I don’t know it. I don’t mean I doubt you, Jenny . . . I know it’s true, but . . . it’s like . . . believing in prehistoric man . . . all the things archæologists tell us. You know it’s true . . . but you don’t believe it . . . quite. You don’t really believe anything you haven’t known for yourself. And that poor girl . . . Kitty . . . you say she’s my wife . . . that I married her. Why? Why didn’t I marry Margaret? I love her so terribly. You don’t know . . . how sweet and dear and lovely she is. Ever since the first time I went down there . . . from Uncle Ambrose’s on the other bank of the river . . . and she came across, as she always did, in the punt they used as a ferry, to bring me over, and gave me tea at the inn her father kept . . . I knew I loved her. I was going to marry her . . . I'd told her I loved her, and she loved me too. I remember there was a quarrel . . . oh, the stupidest quarrel . . . but it couldn’t have been that. I was jealous and foolish . . . but I wrote to make it up, I know I did, and . . . and then I can’t remember any more. And she’s all that matters to me . . . all that’s real or beautiful in life. If you’d seen her
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