"What has the draft law to do with Mrs. Valentine?"
"Why, you know what she was doing, don't you?"
"I haven't seen her recently."
The rector half-stopped.
"Well!" he said. "Let me tell you, Clayton, that that girl has been
recruiting men, night after night and day after day. She's done wonders.
Standing in a wagon, mind you, in the slums, or anywhere; I heard
her one night. By George, I went home and tore up a sermon I had been
working on for days."
Why hadn't he known? Why hadn't he realized that that was exactly the
sort of thing she would do? There was bitterness in his heart, too.
He might easily have stood unseen in the crowd, and have watched and
listened and been proud of her. Then, these last weeks, when he had been
working, or dining out, or sitting dreary and bored in a theater, she
had been out in the streets. Ah, she lived, did Audrey. Others worked
and played, but she lived. Audrey! Audrey!
"--in the rain," the rector was saying. "But she didn't mind it. I
remember her saying to the crowd, 'It's raining over here, and maybe
it's raining on the fellows in the trenches. But I tell you, I'd rather
be over there, up to my waist in mud and water, than scurrying for a
doorway here.' They had started to run out of the shower, but at that
they grinned and stopped. She was wonderful, Clayton."
In the rain! And after it was over she would go home, in some crowded
bus or car, to her lonely rooms, while he rolled about the city in a
limousine! It was cruel of her not to have told him, not to have allowed
him at least to see that she was warm and dry.
"I've been very busy. I hadn't heard," he said, slowly. "Is it--was it
generally known?"
Had Natalie known, and kept it from him?
"I think not. Delight saw her and spoke to her, I believe."
"And you have no idea where she is now."
"None whatever."
He learned that night that Natalie had known, and he surprised a little
uneasiness in her face.
"I--heard about it," she said. "I can't imagine her making a speech.
She's not a bit oratorical."
"We might have sent out one of the cars for her, if I'd known."
"Oh, she was looked after well enough."
"Looked after?"