Stripped of non-essentials, it was this: He had become engaged at a “co-ed.” school, as he called it, some years before, and when he was drafted, in the possible event of his being ordered abroad, the twain decided to get married instead of waiting a few more years. One Sunday morning in November they hunted up a clergyman and the knot was tied. They then had lunch at the station and she took her train and he went back to his camp. She was an army nurse and he was in the Engineers. Now, as inclination alone could have caused them to unite (there wasn’t the ghost of another reason apparent; they hadn’t even mentioned the matter to their families), the sequel of the story becomes somewhat interesting; in fact, quite incomprehensible, let us say, to the Latin; even I myself was a bit muddled as to the whereforeness of it all. Well, to continue. The next time they meet is when Fate, not quite unmindful of them, sends him as instructor to a camp in the Middle West on the outskirts of the very town where her people live, and she goes to spend a three days’ leave with them. The not-too-eager and certainly not-over-inventive bridegroom (whatever combinations may have been in his mind, neither he nor history records) gets a few hours’ leave and goes to spend Sunday at the home of his bride. I begin to breathe. But not at all. Her people, innocent as the new moon of the marriage, ask a few neighbors in for lunch—to make it pleasant for them. The bride was to return that very same afternoon to her hospital. They did walk to the station (under the same umbrella, I hope) and there they said good-by. “It was what you might call a quiet wedding,” I hazarded at this stage, and it was too dark to see if he caught the point. Please bear in mind that this was a marriage of inclination; no other explanation, I repeat, being possible. And the luncheon took place the end of January. The next time the situation seems about to clear up is in the golden month of August, she having been transferred to the military hospital near the camp to which he, in the meantime, had been transferred as instructor. It seemed providential and again I breathe, thinking, “Love will find a way.” Not at all. The bride rings him up the Sabbath morning after his arrival (Sunday is evidently a bad day for that young man) and tells him her orders take her to Camp Sill that night. The next day he gets orders to report for overseas duty, and here we sit in the dark, on the outskirts of Belfort! He breaks the silence later, with a certain eagerness in his voice (not, however, for his distant bride, who, I also gather, still bears her maiden name): “I do hope if we beat them I get a chance to go into Germany with the troops. I’ve wandered all my life [he’s between twenty-five and thirty] and sometimes I wonder how I’ll take to living in one place and bringing up a family.” In the dark I wondered, too.