All through the night Rodney rode and thought. He was angry at Natalie,
but he was angrier at himself. He felt that he had been brutal,
unnecessarily callous. After all, her only son was on his way to war.
It was on the cards that he might not come back. And he had let his
uneasiness dominate his sympathy. He had lost her, but then he had never
had her. He never could have her.
Half way to town, on a back road, the car broke down, and after vainly
endeavoring to start it the chauffeur set off on foot to secure help.
Rodney slept, uncomfortably, and wakened with the movement of the
machine to find it broad day. That was awkward, for Natalie's car was
conspicuous, marked too with her initials. He asked to be set down at a
suburban railway station, and was dismayed to find it crowded with early
commuters, who stared at the big car with interest. On the platform,
eyeing him with unfriendly eyes, was Nolan. Rodney made a movement
toward him. The situation was intolerable, absurd. But Nolan turned his
back and proceeded to read his newspaper.
Perhaps not in years had Rodney Page faced the truth about himself so
clearly as he did that morning, riding into the city on the train which
carried, somewhere ahead, that quietly contemptuous figure that was
Denis Nolan. Faced the truth, saw himself for what he was, and loathed
the thing he saw. For a little time, too, it was given him to see
Natalie for what she was, for what she would always be, her sole
contribution to life the web of her selfishness, carefully woven,
floating apparently aimlessly, and yet snaring and holding relentlessly
whatever it touched. Killing freedom. He saw Clayton and Graham and
himself, feeders for her monstrous complacency and vanity, and he made a
definite determination to free himself.
"I'm through," he reflected savagely. "I'll show them something, too.
I'll--"
He hesitated. How lovely she was! And she cared for him. She was small
and selfish and unspeakably vain, but she cared for him.
The war had done something for Rodney Page. He no longer dreamed the
old dream, of turning her ice to fire. But he dreamed, for a moment,
something finer. He saw Natalie his, and growing big and fine through
love. He saw himself and Natalie, like cards in the game of life,
re-dealt. A new combination; a winning hand--