Later on that evening, with Harvey's wide cheerful face turned adoringly
to her, Sara Lee formulated a question: "Don't you sometimes feel as though you'd like to go to France and fight?"
"What for?"
"Well, they need men, don't they?"
"I guess they don't need me, honey. I'd be the dickens of a lot of use!
Never fired a gun in my life."
"You could learn. It isn't hard."
Harvey sat upright and stared at her.
"Oh, if you want me to go--" he said, and waited.
Sara Lee twisted her ring on her finger.
"Nobody wants anybody to go," she said not very elegantly. "I'd
just--I'd rather like to think you wanted to go."
That was almost too subtle for Harvey. Something about him was rather
reminiscent of Uncle James on mornings when he was determined not to
go to church.
"It's not our fight," he said. "And as far as that goes, I'm not so
sure there isn't right on both sides. Or wrong. Most likely wrong.
I'd look fine going over there to help the Allies, and then making up my
mind it was the British who'd spilled the beans. Now let's talk about
something interesting--for instance, how much we love each other."
It was always "we" with Harvey. In his simple creed if a girl accepted
a man and let him kiss her and wore his ring it was a reciprocal love
affair. It never occurred to him that sometimes as the evening dragged
toward a close Sara Lee was just a bit weary of his arms, and that she
sought, after he had gone, the haven of her little white room, and closed
the door, and had to look rather a long time at his photograph before
she was in a properly loving mood again.
But that night after his prolonged leave-taking Sara Lee went upstairs
to her room and faced the situation.
She was going to marry Harvey. She was committed to that. And she loved
him; not as he cared, perhaps, but he was a very definite part of her
life. Once or twice when he had been detained by business she had missed
him, had put in a lonely and most unhappy evening.
Sara Lee had known comparatively few men. In that small and simple
circle of hers, with its tennis court in a vacant lot, its one or two
inexpensive cars, its picnics and porch parties, there was none of the
usual give and take of more sophisticated circles. Boys and girls paired
off rather early, and remained paired by tacit agreement; there was
comparatively little shifting. There were few free lances among the men,
and none among the girls. When she was seventeen Harvey had made it
known unmistakably that Sara Lee was his, and no trespassing. And for
two years he had without intentional selfishness kept Sara Lee for
himself.