Read Online The Darts of Cupid: Stories by Edith Templeton - Free Book Online

offered the rank of captain with the British Army of Occupation in Germany, though the war was not yet over, and a salary that was three times as much as the one the Americans paid me.
    "What a giggle," said Claudia. "Imagine Prescott-Clark as a captain. Will they salute you in the streets?"
    "Don’t be silly, Carter," I said. "They can whistle for me. I’m not going."
    "Come along, you lasses," said June. "Let’s have a bash at Queenie and the tea leaves," and we went in search of the chorus girl, who could be relied upon to assure each of us that we would be granted our "heart’s desire."
    "I’m mighty glad for you, ma’am," said Sergeant Parsons later.
    "I’m not," I said. "I mean, it’s very nice to know that somebody thinks I’m worth all that money, but I shan’t take it, of course."
    "I think you are very wrong," he said. "We none of us can see into the future."
    "Queenie can," I said, "and I’m all set for France."
    "You have turned them down already?" he asked.
    "No. They’ve given me two months’ grace to think about it, and I’ll take my time over it. Let them think I’m brooding day and night. Claudia, June, and Betty all say that I’m quite right, too, we should stick together. We’ll sit in Paris in the Ritz and swill champagne. And when the cork hits us in the eye we’ll come to you and you’ll pull it out."
    Two days later, the Sergeant stopped at my desk again. "I thought you’d like to know, ma’am," he said, "that I heard from the Major—the Colonel, that is."
    I felt I was turning pale. "Which one?" I asked. "There are so many of them flitting about these days that I can’t keep up with them."
    "There is only one for you, ma’am," he said, "and I just had word he’s been shipped to the Zone of Interior."
    "They have sent him to the States?" I asked.
    "They have."
    "Why?" I asked. "Has he been wounded?"
    "No," said the Sergeant. "He’s gone crazy."
    "It’s not true," I said. "I’ve never seen a saner man in my life."
    "People always say that at times like this," said the Sergeant, and he pressed his lips together carefully, making them still thinner than they were.
    I watched him. It seemed to me he was shutting away some further knowledge which he was unwilling to impart. "It’s not true," I repeated.
    "Would you rather have him dead?" he asked pleasantly.
    "Are you trying to tell me that he’s dead?" I asked.
    "I’m not, ma’am. It might be better if he were, perhaps, from your point of view. But it comes out just the same. You can write him off for dead, as far as you are concerned."
    "How do you mean?" I asked.
    "You are so stupid, you women," he said. "You want to throw everything over for the sake of a man, and you can’t understand that a man likes to be comfortable, above all, and once he is home, in his own country and with his family and people he knows around him, he won’t break out and destroy his setup."
    I said, "You mean he’s too lazy and he’ll stay where he is?" And I added, slowly and carefully, as though speaking in a foreign language, "As a matter of convenience?"
    "Yes, ma’am, and you can’t blame him," said the Sergeant.
    I had to wait till the lunch hour to seek out Sergeant Kelly. He said, "Buttercup, have you heard the latest definition of a wolf? A wolf is a man who when he meets a sweater girl tries to pull the wool over her eyes."
    I forced myself to laugh, and after thus having paid to gain his attention I made my inquiry.
    "Yes, he’s gone back to the States," said Kelly.
    "And you believe this rot about his madness?" I asked.
    "I don’t," he said. "That’s Parsons’s idea. Some of the boys guess he’s faked being screwball, now that the war is almost over, so he’d get back home in advance of the others and get himself a swell job."
    "You are screwball yourself," I said. "He’d never— The very idea of it— You make me sick."
    "I don’t believe it myself, either," he said. "I don’t know what to think. It kind of beats