This Was Tomorrow Read Online Free Page A

back to the hotel and I sat very still on a sofa and just missed it. They were all feeling so sick themselves they didn’t notice. But it showed me how much good I’m going to be when any real excitement starts.”
    “You’ll have to tell them.”
    “I can’t possibly.” There was a long silence. “It’s only a question of how long I can stand up to it,” he said with a sigh. “Sylvie, darling, I’m ashamed of myself. I’ve never admitted to anyone before that I’d read up on the fever. Everybody thinks I believe just what I’ve been told, which wasn’t more than half of it. Maybe I am all right, maybe I’ll never have another attack. But you see— I know I can go down again tomorrow, and each time I lose ground. But I have to pretend I don’t know that, see?”
    “Except to me,” said Sylvia.
    “Except to you, now.”
    “It must have been a lonely sort of thing to carry round with you, Jeff. How long have you known?”
    “Years. Will you swear on a stack of Bibles never to mention again anything we’ve said here today?”
    “No, I won’t swear. Because you’ve told the truth about yourself, and that’s very good for you.”
    “Like a kind of pill.” He nodded wryly.
    “You’ll find people have to tell the truth in this house, Cousin Sue lived here so long.”
    “You think she had something to do with this?”
    “I think she did.”
    “I can almost believe it,” he said thoughtfully. “I threw myself on her mercy—I asked for some sign —and then I saw you standing there—”
    “Yes, why did I come, just then? I didn’t know you would arrive today.”
    Their eyes held in a long, probing stare.
    “Well, why did you come?” he said, and she answered, “I brought her some flowers. It—just seemed like a good idea to bring her some flowers.”
    “Sylvie—”
    “Yes, Jeff?” She stretched out a hand to him along the sofa, and he closed his fingers on her long cool ones. “I’m here, Jeff. I always have been here. I always will be.”
    “I can’t—” He swallowed. “I can’t—”
    “Darling, don’t worry about it. I’m not so hell-bent on getting married.”
    With a rueful little sound, half sob, half laughter, he leaned towards her and hid his face against her shoulder. After a moment she moved cautiously to put her arms round him, and held him there, her cheek against his straight dark hair, and neither of them seemed to breathe. Then she said, “Besides, we don’t have to talk about being in love, do we? We can have good times just as we are—just as we’ve always been.”
    “That’s not fair to you,” he said, his face still hidden. “Pretty girl like you has to get married.”
    “Who says?” said Sylvia.
    “If only you hadn’t grown up to be such a pretty girl,” he grumbled against her shoulder. “Got a lot of beaux?”
    “Depends what you call a lot.”
    “Bet you could get married tomorrow if you only crooked your finger.”
    “I’m hard to suit, I reckon.”
    He sat up slowly, without self-consciousness, and looked down at her, his arm along the back of the sofa.
    “That’s right,” he said. “You go on being hard to suit. That way you’ll get something better than anything you’ve seen yet.”
    “There’s nothing better than this, Jeff. Just you and me, together again, and we can lick anything that comes. Even Germans.” Her fingers tightened briefly on his and then withdrew. “I’m going home now and leave you to yourself for a while. Wash your face and brush your hair and change your shirt and come to dinner. Seven o’clock, remember?” She rose, and he remained looking up at her remotely, unsmiling, from the sofa. “Can you find your way alone?”
    “Blindfolded.”
    “I’ll run along and tell them to lay another place.”
    She was gone, lightly, with a wave of her hand from the doorway.
4
    Jeff sat still. He was certainly very tired, all of a sudden, which he was used to—and he was at peace in himself, which was a less