At first the very fact that he could not have her had been,
unconsciously, the secret of her attraction. She was a perfect thing,
and unattainable. He could sigh for her with longing and perfect safety.
But as time went on, with that incapacity of any human emotion to stand
still, but either to go on or to go back, his passion took on a more
human and less poetic aspect. She satisfied him less, and he wanted
more.
For one thing, he dreamed that strange dream of mankind, of making ice
burn, of turning snow to fire. The old chimera of turning the cold woman
to warmth through his own passion began to obsess him. Sometimes he
watched Natalie, and had strange fancies. He saw her lit from within by
a fire, which was not the reflection of his, but was recklessly her own.
How wonderful she would be, he thought. And at those times he had wild
visions of going away with her into some beautiful wilderness and there
teaching her what she had missed in life.
But altho now he always wanted her, he was not always thinking of
a wilderness. It was in his own world that he wanted her, to fit
beautifully into his house, to move, exquisitely dressed, through
ball-rooms beside him. He wanted her, at those times, as the most
perfect of all his treasures. He was still a collector!
The summer only served to increase his passion. During the long hot
days, when Clayton was abroad or in Washington, or working late at
night, as he frequently did how, they were much together. Natalie's
plans for gayety had failed dismally. The city and the country houses
near were entirely lacking in men. She found it a real grievance.
"I don't know what we are coming to," she complained. "The country club
is like a girl's boarding-school. I wish to heaven the war was over, and
things were sensible again."
So, during his week-end visits, they spent most of the time together.
There were always girls there, and now and then a few men, who always
explained immediately that they had been turned down for the service, or
were going in the fall.
"I'm sure somebody has to stay home and attend to things here," she said
to him one August night. "But even when they are in America, they are
rushing about, pretending to do things. One would think to see Clayton
that he is the entire government. It's absurd."
"I wish I could go," he said unexpectedly.
"Don't be idiotic. You're much too old."