Burned Bridges

Of course he wanted to see Sam Carr again. Also he wanted to see Sophie.

Why he wished to see her was not so readily answered. He wanted to see

her again, that was all--just as he had wanted to see Canada and his

aunts, and the green slopes of the Pacific again. Because all these

things and people were links with a past that was good and kindly by

comparison with the too-vivid recent days. Yes, surely, he would be glad

to see Sam Carr--and Sophie. When he recalled the last time he spoke

with her he could smile a little wryly. It had been almost a tragedy

then. It did not seem much now. The man who had piloted a battle-plane

over swaying armies in France could smile reminiscently at being called

a rabbit by an angry girl.

It was queer Sophie had never married. His thought took that turn

presently. She was--he checked the years on his fingers--oh, well, she

was only twenty-four. Still, she was no frail, bloodless creature, but a

woman destined by nature for mating, a beautiful woman well fit to

mother beautiful daughters and strong sons, to fill a lover with joy and

a husband with pride.

A queer warmth flushed Thompson's cheek when he thought of Sophie this

wise. A jealous feeling stabbed at him. The virus was still in his

blood, he became suddenly aware. And then he laughed out loud, at his

own camouflaging. He had known it all the time. And this trip it would

be kill or cure, he said to himself whimsically.

Still it was odd, now he came to think of it, that Sophie had never in

those years found a man quite to her liking. She had had choice enough,

Thompson knew. But it was no more strange, after all, than for himself

never to have looked with tender eyes on any one of the women he had

known. He had liked them, but he hadn't ever got past the stage of

comparing them with Sophie Carr. She had always been the standard he set

to judge the others. Thompson realized that he was quite a hopeless case

in this respect.

"I must be a sort of a freak," he muttered to himself when he was stowed

away in his blankets. "I wonder if I could like another woman, as

well, if I tried? Well, we'll see, we'll see."