He
looked haggard and tired when he came back, but his quiet face held
a new resolve. War had come at last. He would put behind him the
selfish craving for happiness, forget himself. He would not make
money out of the nation's necessity. He would put Audrey out of
his mind, if not out of his heart. He would try to rebuild his
house of life along new and better lines. Perhaps he could bring
Natalie to see things as he saw them, as they were, not as she
wanted them to be.
Some times it took great crises to bring out women. Child-bearing
did it, often. Urgent need did it, too. But after all the real
test was war. The big woman met it squarely, took her part of the
burden; the small woman weakened, went down under it, found it a
grievance rather than a grief.
He did not notice Graham's car when it passed him, outside the
city limits, or see Anna Klein's startled eyes as it flashed by.
Graham did not come in until evening. At ten o'clock Clayton found
the second man carrying up-stairs a tray containing whisky and soda,
and before he slept he heard a tap at Graham's door across the hall,
and surmised that he had rung for another.
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