"Perhaps I am."
But she smiled frankly into Natalie's eyes.
"I know if I were married to him, I'd try to do what he wanted."
"You'd try it for a year. Then you'd give it up. It's one thing to
admire a man. It's quite different being married to him, and having to
put up with all sorts of things?"
Her voice trailed off before the dark vision of her domestic,
unhappiness. And again, as with Graham and his father, it was what she
did not say that counted. Audrey came close to hating her just then.
So far the conversation had not touched on Graham, and now they were
turning in the new drive. Already the lawns Were showing green, and
extensive plantings of shrubbery were putting out their pale new buds.
Audrey, bending forward in the car, found it very lovely, and because
it belonged to Clay, was to be his home, it thrilled her, just as the
towering furnaces of his mill thrilled her, the lines of men leaving at
nightfall. It was his, therefore it was significant.
The house amazed her. Even Natalie's enthusiasm had not promised
anything so stately or so vast. Moving behind her through great empty
rooms, to the sound of incessant hammering, over which Natalie's voice
was raised shrilly, she was forced to confess that, between them,
Natalie and Rodney had made a lovely thing. She felt no jealousy when
she contrasted it with her own small apartment. She even felt that it
was the sort of house Clayton should have.
For, although it had been designed as a setting for Natalie, although
every color-scheme, almost every chair, had been bought with a view to
forming a background for her, it was too big, too massive. It dwarfed
her. Out-of-doors, Audrey lost that feeling. In the formal garden
Natalie was charmingly framed. It was like her, beautifully exact,
carefully planned, already with its spring borders faintly glowing.
Natalie cheered in her approval.
"You're so comforting," she said. "Clay thinks it isn't homelike. He
says it's a show place--which it ought to be. It cost enough--and he
hates show places. He really ought to have a cottage. Now let's see the
swimming-pool."
But at the pool she lost her gayety. The cement basin, still empty,
gleamed white in the sun, and Natalie, suddenly brooding, stood beside
it staring absently into it.
"It was for Graham," she said at last. "We were going to have week-end
parties, and all sorts of young people. But now!"
"What about now?"