"I wasn"t angry. I understood."
That was it, in a nutsh.e.l.l. Audrey understood. She was that sort. She never held small resentments. He rather thought she never felt them.
"Don"t talk about me," she said. "Tell me about you and why you are here. It"s the war, of course."
So, rather reluctantly, he told her. He shrank from seeming to want her approval, but at the same time he wanted it. His faith in himself had been shaken. He needed it restored. And some of the exaltation which had led him to make his proffer to the government came back when he saw how she flushed over it.
"It"s very big," she said, softly. "It"s like you, Clay. And that"s the best thing I can say. I am very proud of you."
"I would rather have you proud of me than anything in the world," he said, unsteadily.
They drifted, somehow, to talking of happiness. And always, carefully veiled, it was their own happiness they discussed.
"I don"t think," she said, glancing away from him, "that one finds it by looking for it. That is selfish, and the selfish are never happy.
It comes--oh, in queer ways. When you"re trying to give it to somebody else, mostly."
"There is happiness, of a sort, in work."
Their eyes met. That was what they had to face, she dedicated to service, he to labor.
"It"s never found by making other people unhappy, Clay."
"No. And yet, if the other people are already unhappy?"
"Never!" she said. And the answer was to the unspoken question in both their hearts.
It was not until they were in the taxicab that Clayton forced the personal note, and then it came as a cry, out of the very depths of him.
She had slipped her hand into his, and the comfort of even that small touch broke down the barriers he had so carefully erected.
"I need you so!" he said. And he held her hand to his face. She made no movement to withdraw it.
"I need you, too," she replied. "I never get over needing you. But we are going to play the game, Clay. We may have our weak hours--and this is one of them--but always, please G.o.d, we"ll play the game."
The curious humility he felt with her was in his voice.
"I"ll need your help, even in that."
And that touch of boyishness almost broke down her reserve of strength.
She wanted to draw his head down on her shoulder, and comfort him. She wanted to smooth back his heavy hair, and put her arms around him and hold him. There was a great tenderness in her for him. There were times when she would have given the world to have gone into his arms and let him hold her there, protected and shielded. But that night she was the stronger, and she knew it.
"I love you, Audrey. I love you terribly."
And that was the word for it. It was terrible. She knew it.
"To have gone through all the world," he said, brokenly, "and then to find the Woman, when it is too late. Forever too late." He turned toward her. "You know it, don"t you? That you are my woman?"
"I know it," she answered, steadily. "But I know, too--"
"Let me say it just once. Then never again. I"ll bury it, but you will know it is there. You are my woman. I would go through all of life alone to find you at the end. And if I could look forward, dear, to going through the rest of it with you beside me, so I could touch you, like this--"
"I know."
"If I could only protect you, and shield you--oh, how tenderly I could care for you, my dear, my dear!"
The strength pa.s.sed to him, then. Audrey had a clear picture of what life with him might mean, of his protection, his tenderness. She had never known it. Suddenly every bit of her called out for his care, his quiet strength.
"Don"t make me sorry for myself." There were tears in her eyes. "Will you kiss me, Clay? We might have that to remember."
But they were not to have even that, for the taxicab drew up before her hotel. It was one of the absurd anti-climaxes of life that they should part with a hand-clasp and her formal "Thank you for a lovely evening."
Audrey was the better actor of the two. She went in as casually as though she had not put the only happiness of her life away from her.
But Clayton Spencer stood on the pavement, watching her in, and all the tragedy of the empty years ahead was in his eyes.
CHAPTER x.x.xV
Left alone in her untidy room after Graham"s abrupt departure, Anna Klein was dazed. She stood where he left her, staring ahead. What had happened meant only one thing to her, that Graham no longer cared about her, and, if that was true, she did not care to live.
It never occurred to her that he had done rather a fine thing, or that he had protected her against herself. She felt no particular shame, save the shame of rejection. In her small world of the hill, if a man gave a girl valuable gifts or money there was generally a quid pro quo. If the girl was unwilling, she did not accept such gifts. If the man wanted nothing, he did not make them. And men who made love to girls either wanted to marry them or desired some other relationship with them.
She listened to his retreating footsteps, and then began, automatically to unb.u.t.ton her thin white blouse. But with the sound of the engine of his car below she ran to the window. She leaned out, elbows on the sill, and watched him go, without a look up at her window.
So that was the end of that!
Then, all at once, she was fiercely angry. He had got her into this sc.r.a.pe, and now he had left her. He had pretended to love her, and all the time he had meant to do just this, to let her offer herself so he might reject her. He had been playing with her. She had lost her home because of him, had been beaten almost insensible, had been ill for weeks, and now he had driven away, without even looking back.
She jerked her blouse off, still standing by the window, and when the sleeve caught on her watch, she jerked that off, too. She stood for a moment with it in her hand, her face twisted with shame and anger. Then recklessly and furiously she flung it through the open window.
In the stillness of the street far below she heard it strike and rebound.
"That for him!" she muttered.
Almost immediately she wanted it again. He had given it to her. It was all she had left now, and in a curious way it had, through long wearing, come to mean Graham to her. She leaned out of the window. She thought she saw it gleaming in the gutter, and already, attracted by the crash, a man was crossing the street to where it lay.
"You let that alone," she called down desperately. The figure was already stooping over it. Entirely reckless now, she ran, bare-armed and bare-bosomed, down the stairs and out into the street. She had thought to see its finder escaping, but he was still standing where he had picked it up.
"It"s mine," she began. "I dropped it out of the window. I--"
"You threw it out of the window. I saw you."
It was Rudolph.
"You--" He snarled, and stood with menacing eyes fixed on her bare neck.
"Rudolph!"