came through unscathed. Charles Crawley was
killed in action at the beginning of 1918.
Somehow--that made a difference. I came
home in the autumn of 1918 just before the Armis-tice
and I went straight to Sylvia and told her that
I loved her. I hadn't much hope that she'd care for
me straight away, and you could have knocked me
down with a feather when she asked me why I
hadn't told her sooner. I stammered out some-thing
about Crawley and she said, "But why did
you think I broke it off with him?" And then she
told me that she'd fallen in love with me just as I'd
done with her--from the very first minute.
I said I thought she'd broken off her engage-ment
because of the story I told her and she
laughed scornfully and said that if you loved a
man you wouldn't be as cowardly as that, and we
went over that old vision of mine again and agreed
that it was queer, but nothing more.
Well, there's nothing much to tell for some time
IN A GLASS DARKLY
187
after that. Sylvia and I were married and we were
happy. But I realized, as soon as she was really
mine, that I wasn't cut out for the best kind of
husband. I loved Sylvia devotedly, but I was jeal-ous,
absurdly jealous of anyone she so much as
smiled at. It amused her at first. I think she even
rather liked it. It proved, at least, how devoted I
was.