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"I don't see how you can bear it."

Audrey smiled. "It's really rather nice," she said. "For one thing, I haven't any bills. I never lived on a cash basis before. It's a sort of emancipation."

"Oh, bills!" said Natalie, and waved her hands despairingly. "If you could see my desk! And the way I watch the mail so Clay won't see them first. They really ought to send bills in blank envelopes."

"But you have to give them to him eventually, don't you?"

"I can choose my moment. And it is never in the morning. He's rather awful in the morning."

"Awful?"

"Oh, not ugly. Just quiet. I hate a man who doesn't talk in the mornings. But then, for months, he hasn't really talked at all. That's why" - she was rather breathless - "that's why I went out with Rodney last night."

"I don't think Clayton would mind, if you told him first. It's your own affair, of course, but it doesn't seem quite fair to him."

"Oh, of course you'd side with him. Women always side with the husband."

"I don't 'side' with any one," Audrey protested. "But I am sure, if he realized that you are lonely - "

Suddenly she realized that Natalie was crying. Not much, but enough to force her, to dab her eyes carefully through her veil.

"I'm awfully unhappy, Audrey," she said. "Everything's wrong, and I don't know why. What have I done? I try and try and things just get worse."

Audrey was very uncomfortable. She had a guilty feeling that the whole situation, with Natalie pouring out her woes beside her, was indelicate, unbearable.

"But if Clay - " she began.

"Clay! He's absolutely ungrateful. He takes me for granted, and the house for granted. Everything. And if he knows I want a thing, he disapproves at once. I think sometimes he takes a vicious pleasure in thwarting me."

But as she did not go on, Audrey said nothing. Natalie had raised her veil, and from a gold vanity-case was repairing the damages around her eyes.

"Why don't you find something to do, something to interest you?" Audrey suggested finally.

But Natalie poured out a list of duties that lasted for the last three miles of the trip, ending with the new house.

"Even that has ceased to be a satisfaction," she finished. "Clayton wants to stop work on it, and cut down all the estimates. It's too awful. First he told me to get anything I liked, and now he says to cut down to nothing. I could just shriek about it."

"Perhaps that's because we are in the war, now."

"War or no war, we have to live, don't we? And he thinks I ought to do without the extra man for the car, and the second man in the house, and heaven alone knows what. I'm at the end of my patience."

Audrey made a resolution. After all, what mattered was that things should be more tolerable for Clayton. She turned to Natalie.

"Why don't you try to do what he wants, Natalie? He must have a reason for asking you. And it would please him a lot."

"If I start making concession, I can just keep it up. He's like that."

"He's so awfully fine, Natalie. He's - well, he's rather big. And sometimes I think, if you just tried, he wouldn't be so hard to please. He probably wants peace and happiness?"

"Happiness!" Natalie's voice was high. "That sounds like Clay. Happiness! Don't you suppose I want to be happy?"

"Not enough to work for it," said Audrey, evenly.

Natalie turned and stared at her.

"I believe you're half in love with Clay yourself!"

"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