Whatever intimacy or ardor may have existed between us was almost entirely extinguished, and I no longer held any hope for its development into the profound and meaningful attachment which I had once thought possible. I still saw her occasionally; I would walk home from school with her sometimes, and I think we went once or twice to a motion picture together, sitting on her front porch afterward and talking for a while in a constrained and artificial way. But the only moment of anything like true feeling that I experienced with her again was on the morning, a few months later, when I left Stonemont to join the army Laura came to the station to see me off and brought me a box lunch which she had packed for me to eat on the train. My grandparents were there also—both with wet eyes, looking suddenly terribly small and old—so that it was possible for us to speak only in the most inane and formal manner. She gave the box to me, still holding it by the string after she had placed it in my hands, as if in a final, fugitive contact with me, and said with a curious shy smile, “There’s half a fried chicken and a piece of pumpkin pie that I just made this morning.
