Terry, sagely, and relapsed
into one of the poignant silences that drove old Terry to a perfect
frenzy of curiosity.
Then, in January of 1918, a crisis came to Clayton and Natalie
Spencer. Graham was wounded.
Clayton was at home when the news came. Natalie had been having
one of her ill-assorted, meticulously elaborate dinner-parties,
and when the guests had gone they were for a moment alone in the
drawing-room of their town house. Clayton was fighting in himself
the sense of irritation Natalie's dinners always left, especially
the recent ones. She was serving, he knew, too much food. In the
midst of the agitation on conservation, her dinners ran their
customary seven courses. There was too much wine, too. But it
occurred to him that only the wine had made the dinner endurable.
Then he tried to force himself into better humor. Natalie was as
she was, and if, in an unhappy, struggling, dying world she found
happiness in display, God knew there was little enough happiness.
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