Like Chris.
Perhaps, for the first and last time, she saw Clayton Spencer that
morning with her mind, as well as with her heart. She saw him big
and generous and fine, but she saw him also not quite so big as his
love, conventional, bound by tradition and early training, somewhat
rigid, Calvinistic, and dominated still by a fierce sex pride.
At once the weaknesses of the middle span, and its safety. And,
woman-fashion, she loved him for both his weakness and his strength.
A bigger man might have taken her. A smaller man would have let her
go. Clay was - just Clay; single-hearted, intelligent but not
shrewd, blundering, honest Clay.
She was one great ache for the shelter of his arms.
She had a small sense of shame that, on that day of all others, she
should be obsessed with her own affairs.
This was a great day. That morning, if all went well, the war was
to cease. The curtain was to fall on the great melodrama, and those
who had watched it and those who had played in it would with the
drop of the curtain turn away from the illusion that is war, to the
small and quiet things of home.
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