ve found yourself at
last. There aren't a lot of such women and I daresay they will be fewer
all the time. But they exist, of course."

She glowed under his approval.

There was, in all their meetings, a sub-current of sadness, that they
must be so brief, that before long they must end altogether, that they
could not put into words the things that were in their eyes and their
hearts. After that first hour of her return to consciousness there had
been no expressed tenderness between them. The nurse sat in the room,
eternally knitting, and Clayton sat near Audrey, or read to her, or,
like Terry, wandered about the room. But now and then Audrey, enthroned,
like a princess on her pillows, would find his eyes on her, and such
a hungry look in them that she would clench her hands. And after
such times she always said: "Now, tell me about the mill." Or about
Washington, where he was being summoned with increasing frequency. Or
about Graham. Anything to take that look out of his eyes. He told her
all his plans; he even brought the blue-prints of the new plant and
spread them out on the bed. He was dreaming a great dream those days,
and Audrey knew it. He was building again, this time not for himself,
but for the nation.

After he had gone, looking boyish and reluctant, she would lie for a
little while watching the door. Perhaps he had forgotten something, and
would come back! One day he did, and was surprised to find her suddenly
in tears.

"You came back!" she said half hysterically. "You came back."

That was the only time in all those weeks that he kissed her. The nurse
had gone out, and suddenly he caught her in his arms and held her to
him. He put her back very gently, and she saw that he was pale.

"I think I'd better go now, and not come back," he said.

And for two long and endless days he did not come. Then on the third
he came, very stiff and formal, and with himself well in hand. Audrey,
leaning back and watching him, felt what a boy he was after all, so
determined to do the right thing, so obvious with his blue-prints, and
so self-conscious.

In June she left the hospital and went to the country. She had already
made a little market for her work, and she wanted to carry it on. By
that time, too, she knew that the break must come between Clayton and
herself if it came at all.

"No letters, no anything, Clay," she said, and he acquiesced quietly.
But the night she left, the butler, coming downstairs to inve