“I'm darned if I understand you,” he burst out. And then, in one of his quick remorses, “I'm sorry, mother. I'm just puzzled, that's all. But that plan's no good, anyhow. Marion won't do it. She will have to be welcome in the family, or she won't come.”
“She ought to be glad to come any way she can,” Natalie said sharply. And found Graham's eyes on her, studying her.
“You don't want her. That's plain. But you do want her. That's not so plain. What's the answer, mother?”
And Natalie, with an irritable feeing that she had bungled somehow, got up and flung away the cigaret.
“I am trying to give you what you want,” she said pettishly. “That's clear enough, I should think.”
“There's no other reason?”
“What other reason could there be?”
Dressing to dine at the Hayden's that night, Graham heard Clayton come in and go into his dressing-room. He had an impulse to go over, tie in hand as he was, and put the matter squarely before his father. The marriage-urge—surely a man would understand that. Even Anna, and his predicament there. Anything was better than this constant indirectness of gaining his father's views through his mother.
Had he done so, things would have been different later. But by continual suggestion a vision of his father as hard, detached, immovable, had been built up in his mind. He got as far as the door, hesitated, turned back.
It was Marion herself who solved the mystery of Natalie's changed attitude, when Graham told of it that night. She sat listening, her eyes slightly narrowed, restlessly turning her engagement ring.