Dangerous Days

The old brick floor of the stable he replaced with handmade tiles. The

box-stalls were small display-rooms, hung with tapestries and lighted

with candles in old French sconces. The great carriage-room became a

refectory, with Jacobean and old monastery chairs, and the vast loft

overhead, reached by a narrow staircase that clung to the wall, was

railed on its exposed side, waxed as to floor, hung with lanterns, and

became a ballroom.

Natalie worked with him, spending much time and a prodigious amount of

energy. There was springing up between them one of those curious and

dangerous intimacies, of idleness on the woman's part, of admiration

on the man's, which sometimes develop into a wholly spurious passion.

Probably Rodney realized it; certainly Natalie did not. She liked his

admiration; she dressed, each day, for Rodney's unfailing comment on her

clothes.

"Clay never notices what I wear," she said, once, plaintively.

So it was Rodney who brought Audrey Valentine out of her seclusion,

and he did it by making her angry. He dropped in to see her between

Christmas and New-years, and made a plea.

"A stable-warming!" she said. "How interesting! And fancy dress! Are you

going to have them come as grooms, or jockeys? If I were going I'd go

as a circus-rider. I used to be able to stand up on a running horse. Of

course you're having horses. What's a stable without a horse?"

He saw she was laughing at him and was rather resentful.

"I told you I have made it into a studio."

But when he implored her to go, she was obdurate.

"Do go away and let me alone, Rodney," she said at last. "I loathe

fancy-dress parties."

"It won't be a party without you."

"Then don't have it. I've told you, over and over, I'm not going out. It

isn't decent this year, in my opinion. And, anyhow, I haven't any money,

any clothes, any anything. A bad evening at bridge, and I shouldn't be

able to pay my rent."

"That's nonsense. Why do you let people say you are moping about Chris?

You're not."

"Of course not."

She sat up.

"What else are they saying?"

"Well, there's some talk, naturally. You can't be as popular as you have

been, and then just drop out, without some gossip. It's not bad."

"What sort of talk?"

He was very uncomfortable.

"Well, of course, you have been pretty strong on the war stuff?"

"Oh, they think I sent him!"