"You haven't got to choose. You've only got to obey orders...."
His face stiffened. He looked like some hard commander imposing an unanswerable will.
"... The next time," he said, "you'll be good enough to remember that I settle what risks are to be taken, not you."
Her soul stiffened, too, and was hard. She stood up against him with her shoulder to the door.
"It sounds all right," she said. "But the next time I'll carry him on my back all the way."
* * * * *
She went to bed with her knowledge. He funked and lied. The two things she couldn't stand. His funk and his lying were a real part of him. And it was as if she had always known it, as if all the movements of her mind had been an effort to escape her knowledge.
She opened her eyes. Something hurt them. Gwinnie, coming late to bed, had turned on the electric light. And as she rolled over, turning her back to the light and to Gwinnie, her mind shifted. It saw suddenly the flame leaping in John's face. His delight in danger, that happiness he felt when he went out to meet it, happiness springing up bright and new every day; that was a real part of him. She couldn't doubt it. She knew. And she was left with her queer, baffled sense of surprise and incompleteness. She couldn't see the nature of the bond between these two realities.
That was his secret, his mystery.