At first he had scarcely perceived them. He was so
inured to the perfunctory "dearest" and "darlings" scattered through her
letters that he was oblivious to their presence or absence. But in this
last fortnight he had become increasingly aware that there was
something amiss.
He had sent her a night-letter saying that he had passed his
examinations for an officers' training-camp, and expected to leave for
Georgia shortly. She had not answered. He had wired again--when he
received no word he imagined that she might be out of town. But it
occurred and recurred to him that she was not out of town, and a series
of distraught imaginings began to plague him. Supposing Gloria, bored
and restless, had found some one, even as he had. The thought terrified
him with its possibility--it was chiefly because he had been so sure of
her personal integrity that he had considered her so sparingly during
the year. And now, as a doubt was born, the old angers, the rages of
possession, swarmed back a thousandfold. What more natural than that she
should be in love again?
He remembered the Gloria who promised that should she ever want
anything, she would take it, insisting that since she would act entirely
for her own satisfaction she could go through such an affair
unsmirched--it was only the effect on a person's mind that counted,
anyhow, she said, and her reaction would be the masculine one, of
satiation and faint dislike.
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