Some times it took great crises to bring out women. Child-bearing did it, often. Urgent need did it, too. But after all the real test was war. The big woman met it squarely, took her part of the burden; the small woman weakened, went down under it, found it a grievance rather than a grief.
He did not notice Graham's car when it passed him, outside the city limits, or see Anna Klein's startled eyes as it flashed by.
Graham did not come in until evening. At ten o'clock Clayton found the second man carrying up-stairs a tray containing whisky and soda, and before he slept he heard a tap at Graham's door across the hall, and surmised that he had rung for another. Later still he heard Natalie cross the hall, and rather loud and angry voices. He considered, ironically, that a day which had found a part of the nation on its knees found in his own house only dissension and bitterness.
In the morning, at the office, Joey announced a soldier to see him, and added, with his customary nonchalance:
“We'll be having a lot of them around now, I expect.”
Clayton, glancing up from the visitor's slip in his hand, surprised something wistful in the boy's eyes.
“Want to go, do you?”
“Give my neck to go—sir.” He always added the “sir,” when he remembered it, with the air of throwing a sop to a convention he despised.
“You may yet, you know. This thing is going to last a while. Send him in, Joey.”
He had grown attached to this lad of the streets. He found in his loyalty a thing he could not buy.