"I admit all your good qualities, Clay. Heaven knows they are evident
enough. But you are the sort people admire. They don't love you. They
never will."
Yet that night he had had a curious sense that old Buckham loved him.
Maybe he was the sort men loved and women admired.
He sat down and leaned back in his chair, watching the fire-logs. He
felt very tired. What was that Buckham had said about memories? But
Buckham was old. He was young, young and strong. There would be many
years, and even his most poignant memories would grow dim.
Audrey! Audrey!
From the wall over the mantel Natalie's portrait still surveyed the room
with its delicate complacence. He looked up at it. Yes, Natalie had been
right, he was not the sort to make a woman happy. There were plenty of
men, young men, men still plastic, men who had not known shipwreck, and
some such man Audrey would marry. Perhaps already, in France-He got up. His desk was covered with papers, neatly endorsed by his
secretary. He turned out all the lights but his desk lamp. Natalie's
gleaming flesh-tones died into the shadows, and he stood for a moment,
looking up at it, a dead thing, remote, flat, without significance. Then
he sat down at his desk and took up a bundle of government papers.
There was still work. Thank God for work.