I’d read, before I went to visit the pilot, Tolstoi’s comment on Nicholas Rostov’s letter home: that it was impossible for a young man to write the truth; unconsciously he will always favor himself and reject events and details that do not fit into the way he preferred things to have happened. That’s where I’d stopped reading; the observation had reminded me of the letter I’d sent Constance while we were waiting in San Francisco for our orders to go overseas. I’d written her how much she’d meant to me, how much I missed her, and that I thought of her all the time—which was true—and that I was ashamed of what I’d done. I suppose it was an attempt to cautiously make it up with her—at least a friendship. She’d answered, as I deserved, curtly; it was the last message I would ever receive from her. “Why don’t you act like a man for a change,” she wrote. “Forget about me. C.” That was all. My letter had been foolish and self-favoring. Her answer, true to the situation.