"She been driving any fresh men to suicide lately?" Major Craive
demanded acidly under his breath.
G.J. raised his eyebrows.
Then: "That's not _you_, Frankie!" said the Major with a start of
recognition towards the Staff lieutenant.
"Yes, sir," said Molder.
They shook hands. At the previous Christmas they had lain out together
on the cliffs of the east coast in wild weather, waiting to repel a
phantom army of thirty thousand Germans.
"It was the red hat put me off," the Major explained.
"Not my fault, sir," Molder smiled.
"Devilish glad to see you, my boy."
G.J. murmured to Molder:
"You don't want to go and have tea with her, do you?"
And Molder answered, with the somewhat fatuous, self-conscious
grin that no amount of intelligence can keep out of the face of a
good-looking fellow who knows that he has made an impression:
"Well, I don't know--"
G.J. raised his eyebrows again, but with indulgence, and winked at
Craive.
The Major shut his lips tight, then stood with his mouth open for a
second or two in the attitude of a man suddenly receiving the onset of
a great and original idea.
"She's right, hang it all!" he exclaimed. "She's right! Of course she
is! Why, what's all this"--he waved an arm at the whole scene--"what's
all this but sex? Look at 'em! And look at their portraits! You aren't
going to tell me! What's the good of pretending? Hang it all, when my
own aunt comes down to breakfast in a low-cut blouse that would have
given her fits even in the evening ten years ago!.
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