"It's love of a sort you meet once or twice in a lifetime. It may be the most wonderful or the most terrible thing in the world; or it's both."
Alice became filled with new fears while she waited, hearing nothing from David. She thought: "Fidelia has come back to him." And while she was in the grip of this idea, she dreaded to pass the hotel or meet people who had been there. Then she learned that David had left the hotel and was living in a bachelors' building; yet the fear that Fidelia would return, remained with her.
One evening when she was in the city and she heard boys crying news of an attack by the Canadians, she thought, "Suppose her husband is killed. She'll come back to David." And Alice wondered whether, in law, Fidelia would become his wife again upon the fact of Bolton's death. Alice bought a paper and looked in the list of Canadian officer casualties which the papers were then printing but the name Bolton did not appear.
She rehearsed with herself David's words and the tones of his voice when he had told her how Fidelia had left him for Bolton; and sometimes Alice convinced herself that even if Fidelia returned, David would not have her again; but it became more and more difficult for Alice to believe it, when the weeks went on without further word from him.
Yet, might it not be that he was awaiting word from her? Finally, in February, she wrote to him: "David: To be sure that there may be no mere misunderstanding of anything, such as possibly you may misunderstand why I could not continue my dance with you, I
