"I think you're a better judge than I am," he replied, smiling. He had
had to come back a long way, but he made the effort.
"It's hardly worth while struggling to have things attractive for you,"
she observed petulantly. "You never notice, anyhow. Clay, do you know
that you sit hours and hours, and never talk to me?"
"No! Do I? I'm sorry."
"You're a perfectly dreary person to have around."
"I'll talk to you, my dear. But I'm not much good at houses. Give me
something I understand."
"The mill, I suppose! Or the war!"
"Do I really talk of the war?"
"When you talk at all. What in the world do you think about, Clay, when
you sit with your eyes on nothing? It's a vicious habit."
"Oh, ships and sails and sealing wax and cabbages and kings," he said,
lightly.
That afternoon Natalie slept, and the house took on the tomb-like quiet
of an establishment where the first word in service is silence. Clay
wandered about, feeling an inexpressible loneliness of spirit. On those
days which work did not fill he was always discontented. He thought
of the club, but the vision of those disconsolate groups of homeless
bachelors who gathered there on all festivals that centered about a
family focus was unattractive.
All at once, he realized that, since he had wakened that morning, he
had been wanting to see Audrey. He wanted to talk to her, real talk, not
gossip. Not country houses. Not personalities. Not recrimination. Such
talk as Audrey herself had always led at dinner parties: of men and
affairs, of big issues, of the war.
He felt suddenly that he must talk about the war to some one.
Natalie was still sleeping when he went down-stairs. It had been
raining, but a cold wind was covering the pavement with a glaze of ice.
Here and there men in top hats, like himself, were making their way to
Christmas calls. Children clinging to the arms of governesses, their
feet in high arctics, slid laughing on the ice. A belated florist's
wagon was still delivering Christmas plants tied with bright red bows.
The street held more of festivity to Clayton than had his house.
Even the shop windows, as he walked toward Audrey's unfashionable new
neighborhood, cried out their message of peace. Peace--when there was no
peace.
Audrey was alone, but her little room was crowded with gifts and
flowers.
"I was hoping you would come, Clay," she said. "I've had some visitors,
but they're gone. I'll tell them down-stairs that I'm not at home, and
we can really talk."