"Rinehart, Mary Roberts - The Amazing Interlude" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rinehart Mary Roberts)

"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.

That was how matters stood that January night when Sara Lee went
upstairs after Harvey had gone and read Mabel's letter, with Harvey's
photograph turned to the wall. Under her calm exterior a little flame
of rebellion was burning in her. Harvey's perpetual "we," his attitude
toward the war, and Mabel's letter, with what it opened before her, had
set the match to something in Sara Lee she did not recognize - a strain
of the adventurer, a throw-back to some wandering ancestor perhaps. But
more than anything it had set fire to the something maternal that is in
all good women.

Yet, had Aunt Harriet not come in just then, the flame might have died.
And had it died a certain small page of the history of this war would
never have been written.

Aunt Harriet came in hesitatingly. She wore a black wrapper, and her
face, with her hair drawn back for the night, looked tight and old.