"Don't talk like that," she said, gently. "You are all I have now,
Rodney, and I don't want to lose you. I'm suffering horribly these days.
You're my greatest comfort."
"I've heard you say that of a chair."
"As for loving me, you must not talk like that. Under the circumstances,
it's indelicate."
"Oh!" he had said, and looked at her quickly. "I can love you, but it's
indelicate to tell you about it!"
"I am married, Rodney."
"Good God, do you think I ever forget it?"
There was a real change in their relationship, but neither of them
understood it. The change was that Rodney was no longer playing. Little
by little he had dropped his artistic posing for her benefit, his
cynical cleverness, his adroit simulation of passion. He no longer
dramatized himself, because rather often he forgot himself entirely. His
passion had ceased to be spurious, and it was none the less real because
he loved not a real woman, but one of his own artistic creation.
He saw in Natalie a misunderstood and suffering woman, bearing the
burdens he knew of with dignity and a certain beauty. And behind her
slightly theatrical silences he guessed at other griefs, nobly borne and
only gently intimated. He developed, after a time, a certain suspicion
of Clayton, not of his conduct but of his character. These big men were
often hard. It was that quality which made them successful. They married
tender, gentle girls, and then repressed and trampled on them.
Natalie became, in his mind, a crushed and broken thing, infinitely
lonely and pathetic. And, without in the least understanding, Natalie
instinctively knew it was when she was wistful and dependent that he
found her most attractive, and became wistful and dependent to a point
that imposed even on herself.
"I've been very selfish with you, Rodney, dear," she said, lifting sad
eyes to his. "I am going to be better. You must come often this summer,
and I'll have some nice girls for you to play with."
"Thank you," he said, stiffly.
"We'll have to be as gay as we can," she sighed. "I'm just a little
dreary these days, you know."
It was rather absurd that they were in a shop, and that the clerk should
return just then with curtain cords, and that the discussion of certain
shades of yellow made an anti-climax to it all. But in the car, later,
he turned to her, roughly.
"You needn't ask any girls for me," he said. "I only want one woman, and
if I can't have her I don't want any one."