“Oh! You feel that way, too? I mean—as I do, that it's all hardly worth while? But you seem to have everything, Clay.”
“You have one thing I lack. Youth.”
“Youth! At twenty-eight!”
“You can still mold your life, Audrey dear. You have had a bad time, but—with all reverence to Chris's memory—his going out of it, under the circumstances, is a grief. But it doesn't spell shipwreck.”
“Do you mean that I will marry again?” she asked, in a low tone.
“Don't you think you will, some time? Some nice young chap who will worship you all the days of his life? That—well, that is what I expect for you. It's at least possible, you know.”
“Is it what you want for me?”
“Good God!” he burst out, his restraint suddenly gone. “What do you want me to say? What can I say, except that I want you to be happy? Don't you think I've gone over it all, over and over again? I'd give my life for the right to tell you the things I think, but—I haven't that right. Even this little time together is wrong, the way things are. It is all wrong.”
“I'm sorry, Clay. I know. I am just reckless to-day. You know I am reckless. It's my vice. But sometimes—we'd better talk about the mill.”
But he could not talk about the mill just then. They walked along in silence, and after a little he felt her touch his arm.