They had gone along well enough
until this winter, and then everything had changed. Chris, Natalie,
Clayton, herself - none of them were quite what they had been. Was
that one of the gains of war, that sham fell away, and people
revealed either the best or the worst in them?
War destroyed, but it also revealed.
The temptation was to hear Clayton's voice again. She went to the
telephone, and stood with the instrument in her hands, thinking.
Would it comfort him? Or would it only bring her close for a moment,
to emphasize her coming silence?
She put it down, and turned away. When, some time later, the
taxicab came to take her to Perry Street, she was lying on her bed
in the dusk, face-down and arms outstretched, a lonely and pathetic
figure, all her courage dead for the moment, dead but for the
desire to hear Clayton's voice again before the silence closed down.
She got up and pinned on her hat for the last time, before the
mirror of the little inlaid dressing-table.
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