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III

It was exactly as if they could say "neither of us has anything:
we shall be poor together" – just as delightful that they should be rich
instead. It gave them the same communion of adventure. Yet when
Anson got leave in April, and Paula and her mother accompanied him
North, she was impressed with the standing of his family in New
York and with the scale on which they lived. Alone with Anson for
the first time in the rooms where he had played as a boy, she was
filled with a comfortable emotion, as though she were pre-eminently
safe and taken care of. The pictures of Anson in a skull cap at his first
school, of Anson on horseback with the sweetheart of a mysterious
forgotten summer, of Anson in a gay group of ushers and brides-
maids at a wedding, made her jealous of his life apart from her in the
past, and so completely did his authoritative person seem to sum up
and typify these possessions of his that she was inspired with the idea
of being married immediately and returning to Pensacola as his wife.
But an immediate marriage wasn't discussed – even the
engagement was to be secret until after the war. When she realized
that only two days of his leave remained, her dissatisfaction
crystallized in the intention of making him as unwilling to wait as she
was. They were driving to the country for dinner and she determined
to force the issue that night.
Now a cousin of Paula's was staying with them at the Ritz, a
severe, bitter girl who loved Paula but was somewhat jealous of her
impressive engagement, and as Paula was late in dressing, the cousin,
who wasn't going to the party, received Anson in the parlor of the
suite.
Anson had met friends at five o'clock and drunk freely and
indiscreetly with them for an hour. He left the Yale Club at a proper
time, and his mother's chauffeur drove him to the Ritz, but his usual
capacity was not in evidence, and the impact of the steam-heated
sitting-room made him suddenly dizzy. He knew it, and he was both
amused and sorry.
Paula's cousin was twenty-five, but she was exceptionally
naive, and at first failed to realize what was up. She had never met
Anson before, and she was surprised when he mumbled strange
information and nearly fell off his chair, but until Paula appeared it
didn't occur to her that what she had taken for the odor of a dry-
cleaned uniform was really whiskey. But Paula understood as soon as