And, in the end, she came rather close to the truth:
his sense of failure; his loss of confidence in himself where his
love life was concerned; the strange twisting and warping that were
Natalie's sole legacy from their years together.
For months she had been tending broken bodies and broken spirits.
But the broken pride of a man was a strange and terrible thing.
She did not know where he was stopping, and in the congestion of
the Paris hotels it would be practically impossible to trace him.
And there, too, her own pride stepped in. He must come to her.
He knew she cared. She had been honest with him always, with a
sort of terrible honesty.
Surveying the past months she wondered, not for the first time,
what had held them apart so long, against the urge that had become
the strongest thing in life to them both. The strength in her had
come from him. She knew that. But where had Clay got his strength?
Men were not like that, often. Failing final happiness, they so
often took what they could get.
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