“Would you like me to read to you tonight?” Gretchen asked.

He shook his head on the pillow. Then he put out his hand toward hers. He grasped her hand. She could feel all the fragile birdlike bones. He smiled again and closed his eyes. She sat there, motionless, holding his hand. She sat like that for more than fifteen minutes, not saying anything. Then she saw that he was sleeping. She disengaged her hand gently, stood up, and walked softly out of the room. Tomorrow she would ask the doctor to tell her when he thought Talbot Hughes, victorious, was about to go. She would come and hold his hand, representative of his country’s sorrow, so that he would not be alone when he died, twenty years old, everything unspoken.

She changed into her street clothes quickly and hurried out of the building.

As she went out the front door, she saw Arnold Simms leaning against the wall next to the door, smoking. This was the first time she had seen him since the night in the common room. She hesitated for a moment, then started toward the bus stop.

“Evenin’, Miss Jordache.” The remembered voice, polite, countrified.

Gretchen made herself stop. “Good evening, Arnold,” she said. His face was bland, memoryless.

“The boys finally got themselves something to yell about, didn’t they?” Arnold gestured with a little movement of his head toward the wing which contained the common room.

“They certainly did,” she said. She wanted to get away, but didn’t want to appear as if she were afraid of him.

“These little old Yoonited States went and did it,” Arnold said. “’Twas a mighty fine effort, wouldn’t you say?”

Now he was making fun of her. “We all should be very happy,” she said. He had the trick of making her pompous.

“I’m very happy,” he said. “Yes, indeed. Mighty happy. I got good news today, too. Special good news. That’s why I waited on you out here. I wanted to tell you.”

“What is it, Arnold?”

“I’m being discharged tomorrow,” he said.

“That is good news,” she said. “Congratulations.”

“Yup,” he said. “Officially, according to the Yoonited States Medical Corps, I can walk. Transportation orders to installation nearest point of induction and immediate processing of discharge from the service. This time next week I’ll be back in St. Louis. Arnold Simms, the immediate civilian.”

“I hope you’ll be …” She stopped. She had nearly said happy, but that would have been foolish. “Lucky,” she said. Even worse.

“Oh, I’m a lucky fella,” he said. “No one has to worry about l’il ole Arnold. Got some more good news this week. It was a big week for me, a giant of a week. I got a letter from Cornwall.”

“Oh, isn’t that nice.” Prissy. “That girl you told me about wrote you.” Palm trees. Adam and Eve in the Garden.

“Yep.” He flicked away his cigarette. “She just found out her husband got killed in Italy and she thought I’d like to know.”

There was nothing to say to this, so she kept quiet.

“Well, I won’t be seeing you any more, Miss Jordache,” he said, “unless you happen to be passin’ through St. Louis. You can find me in the telephone book. I’ll be in an exclusive residential district. I won’t keep you no longer. I’m sure you got a victory ball or a country club dance to go to. I just wanted to thank you for everything you done for the troops, Miss Jordache.”

“Good luck, Arnold,” she said coldly.

“Too bad you didn’t find the time to come on down to the Landing that Saturday,” he said, drawling it out flatly. “We got ourselves two fine chickens and roasted them and had ourselves quite a picnic. We missed you.”

“I’d hoped you weren’t going to talk about that, Arnold,” she said. Hypocrite, hypocrite.

“Oh, God,” he said, “you so beautiful I just want to sit down and cry.”

He turned and opened the door to the hospital and limped in.

She walked slowly toward the bus stop, feeling battered. Victory solved nothing.

She stood under the light, looking at her watch, wondering if the bus drivers were also celebrating tonight. There was a car parked down the street in the shadow of a tree. The motor started up and it drove slowly toward her. It was Boylan’s Buick. For a moment she thought of running back into the hospital.

Boylan stopped the car in front of her and opened the door. “Can I give you a lift, ma’am?”

“Thank you very much, no.” She hadn’t seen him for more than a month, not since the night they had driven to New York.

“I thought we might get together to offer fitting thanks to God for blessing our arms with victory,” he said.

“I’ll wait for the bus, thank you,” she said.

“You got my letters, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Yes.” There had been two letters, on her desk at the office, asking her to meet him in front of Bernstein’s Department Store. She hadn’t met him and she hadn’t answered the letters.

“Your reply must have been lost in the mail,” he said. “The service these days is very hit and miss, isn’t it?”

She walked away from the car. He got out and came up to her and held her arm.

“Come up to the house with me,” he said harshly. “This minute.”

His touch unnerved her. She hated him but she knew she wanted to be in his bed. “Let go of me,” she said, and pulled her arm savagely out of his grasp. She walked back to the bus stop, with him following her.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll say what I came to say. I want to marry you.”

She laughed. She didn’t know why she laughed. Surprise.

“I said I want to marry you,” he repeated.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said, “you go on down to Jamaica, as you planned, and I’ll write you there. Leave your address with my secretary. Excuse me, here’s my bus.”

The bus rolled to a stop and she jumped up through the door as soon as it opened. She gave the driver her ticket and went and sat in the back by herself. She was trembling. If the bus hadn’t come along, she would have said yes, she would marry him.

When the bus neared Port Philip she heard the fire engines and looked up the hill. There was a fire on the hill. She hoped it was the main building, burning to the ground.

VI

Claude hung on to him with his good arm, as Tom drove the bike down the narrow back road behind the Boylan estate. He hadn’t had much practice and he had to go slowly and Claude moaned in his ear every time they skidded or hit a bump. Tom didn’t know how bad the arm was, but he knew something had to be done about it. But if he took Claude to the hospital, they’d ask how he happened to get burned and it wouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out the connection between the boy with the burned arm and the cross flaming on the Boylan hill. And Claude sure as hell wouldn’t take the blame alone. Claude was no hero. He’d never die under torture with his secret forever clamped between his lips, that was for sure.

“Listen,” Tom said, slowing the bike down so that they were hardly moving, “you got a family doctor?”

“Yeah,” Claude said. “My uncle.”

That was the kind of a family to have. Priests, doctors, there probably was a lawyer uncle, too, who would come in handy later on, after they were arrested.

“What’s the address?” Tom asked.

Claude mumbled the address. He was so frightened he found it almost impossible to speak. Tom speeded up and keeping on back roads, found his way to the big house on the outskirts of the town, with a sign on the lawn that said, “Dr. Robert Tinker, M.D.”

Tom stopped the bike and helped Claude off. “Listen,” he said, “you’re going in there alone, you understand, and no matter what you tell your uncle, you don’t mention my name. And you better get your father to send you out of town tonight. There’s going to be an awful mess in this town tomorrow and if anybody sees you walking around with a burned hand it’ll take them just about ten seconds to come down on you like a load of bricks.”