“It all seemed like a dream, Joy—bumping along in a taxi beside the man I’d been in love with for so long—and he spreading his tale of woe. It couldn’t have happened any other time but war times. If he thought about telling me this stuff at all, he thought I was the grade of intelligence that would peacefully let it slide by. I got that fact, and began to think in quick flashes. Ever since I had watched the back of his head, back in Charlette’s, I had fixed it in my mind so that he could have walked over me in golf shoes and I would have sat up and begged for more. I wanted to get hold of that girl and feel my fingernails meet in her throat. As for Phil—the more he talked about it, the gloomier an atmosphere he cast. “We got to my apartment and as I opened up some joy getter, he passed the remark that I did myself pretty well for a cabaret singer. Then he slumped right down again, and got so low he couldn’t even drink. ‘It’s no use,’ he said; ‘in my frame of mind, Uncle Sam’s army is better off without me, and God knows there’s no one else in this universe who would care!’ When men say that, you always know they mean a girl. They never seem to think of their families in that connection. “I went over to where he was looking at my wine, and said: ‘You’re drunk. To snuff yourself out would brand you a coward in the eyes of the world and God, too. Besides which, I won’t let you.’ He ripped off a nasty laugh at that. ‘This is really almost amusing—to be sitting listening to a cabaret girl tell me _she_ won’t let me “snuff myself out!”’ He took my hand, and hung onto it. ‘Then you do want me for the eighth star!’ A man never plain holds your hand, it seems—it’s just a starter. ‘Listen here,’ I said. ‘I may be a cabaret girl, but I’m not several other little things you seem to think I am. I’ve got “honour and truth and a sure intent,” which is more than you’ll have if you follow up your intent with me!’ “He dropped my hand like a hot potato and squared off to take a look at me. ‘Did you say honour and truth and——?’ ‘I did,’ said I. ‘So come to and stay there.’ ‘I never made a mistake like this before,’ he said. ‘I think I had better go.’ “I can tell you it made me feel pretty sick. If I could have stopped caring for him the way I’d started—but I couldn’t—I’d sort of fixed everything on him and there it hung. And here he was going to the sausages, and wanted me to help him fry himself. I was knocked cold. I hadn’t really got what he had doped me out to be—until he said he’d better go.