Audrey smiled. “It's really rather nice,” she said. “For one thing, I haven't any bills. I never lived on a cash basis before. It's a sort of emancipation.”
“Oh, bills!” said Natalie, and waved her hands despairingly. “If you could see my desk! And the way I watch the mail so Clay won't see them first. They really ought to send bills in blank envelopes.”
“But you have to give them to him eventually, don't you?”
“I can choose my moment. And it is never in the morning. He's rather awful in the morning.”
“Awful?”
“Oh, not ugly. Just quiet. I hate a man who doesn't talk in the mornings. But then, for months, he hasn't really talked at all. That's why”—she was rather breathless—“that's why I went out with Rodney last night.”
“I don't think Clayton would mind, if you told him first. It's your own affair, of course, but it doesn't seem quite fair to him.”
“Oh, of course you'd side with him. Women always side with the husband.”
“I don't 'side' with any one,” Audrey protested. “But I am sure, if he realized that you are lonely—”
Suddenly she realized that Natalie was crying. Not much, but enough to force her, to dab her eyes carefully through her veil.