That was it, in a nutshell. Audrey understood. She was that sort. She never held small resentments. He rather thought she never felt them.
“Don't talk about me,” she said. “Tell me about you and why you are here. It's the war, of course.”
So, rather reluctantly, he told her. He shrank from seeming to want her approval, but at the same time he wanted it. His faith in himself had been shaken. He needed it restored. And some of the exaltation which had led him to make his proffer to the government came back when he saw how she flushed over it.
“It's very big,” she said, softly. “It's like you, Clay. And that's the best thing I can say. I am very proud of you.”
“I would rather have you proud of me than anything in the world,” he said, unsteadily.
They drifted, somehow, to talking of happiness. And always, carefully veiled, it was their own happiness they discussed.
“I don't think,” she said, glancing away from him, “that one finds it by looking for it. That is selfish, and the selfish are never happy. It comes—oh, in queer ways. When you're trying to give it to somebody else, mostly.”
“There is happiness, of a sort, in work.”
Their eyes met. That was what they had to face, she dedicated to service, he to labor.
“It's never found by making other people unhappy, Clay.”