Dangerous Days

"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."