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 manent position somewhere else. He went away, and we wrote long letters full of exclamation points and words underlined—you know the kind of letters—and I began to keep a 'hope chest.' Hum. Imagine me hemming linen towels!

"Then the war.

"When I think of it now, I think of it in three stages. The first stage, when I said to myself that it was all right, the Armistice would come in just a few weeks now, I needn't worry. Then the second stage, when Paul was at training camp in Massachusetts, and I thought, 'He won't have to go. It'll be over before he can get there.' I kept telling myself that again and again—arguing with my fright.

"And then all of a sudden he wired me, and I took a train—oh, the slowest train, Jock Hamill, I can remember yet how it dragged along, all night and half the next day!—and we were married at four that afternoon in a little town near Camp Devens, where he'd been stationed." Yvonne smiled a smile without mirth, as though invisible strings were jerking her mouth up at the corners. "So funny! Just a parody of a wedding. In a shabby little house, with a shabby little minister, and the minister's wife and a fat woman who came in wiping soapsuds off her big red arms with her apron, for witnesses. The place smelled of boiling cabbage, and flies buzzed against the windowpanes. I'll never forget the commotion they made. It seemed to fill my ears and my mind, until I couldn't think of anything else. Mercifully, perhaps . . . but I'd have liked things different. I'd have liked satin, and lilies, and stained glass, and the low throb of organ music—something to treasure beautifully through all the years."

She fell silent, and her lids dropped down, shutting