“I hope not. She was being so useful here. Of course, the draft law—amazing thing, the draft law! Never thought we'd come to it. But it threw her out, in a way, of course.”
“What has the draft law to do with Mrs. Valentine?”
“Why, you know what she was doing, don't you?”
“I haven't seen her recently.”
The rector half-stopped.
“Well!” he said. “Let me tell you, Clayton, that that girl has been recruiting men, night after night and day after day. She's done wonders. Standing in a wagon, mind you, in the slums, or anywhere; I heard her one night. By George, I went home and tore up a sermon I had been working on for days.”
Why hadn't he known? Why hadn't he realized that that was exactly the sort of thing she would do? There was bitterness in his heart, too. He might easily have stood unseen in the crowd, and have watched and listened and been proud of her. Then, these last weeks, when he had been working, or dining out, or sitting dreary and bored in a theater, she had been out in the streets. Ah, she lived, did Audrey. Others worked and played, but she lived. Audrey! Audrey!
“—in the rain,” the rector was saying. “But she didn't mind it. I remember her saying to the crowd, 'It's raining over here, and maybe it's raining on the fellows in the trenches. But I tell you, I'd rather be over there, up to my waist in mud and water, than scurrying for a doorway here.' They had started to run out of the shower, but at that they grinned and stopped. She was wonderful, Clayton.”
In the rain! And after it was over she would go home, in some crowded bus or car, to her lonely rooms, while he rolled about the city in a limousine! It was cruel of her not to have told him, not to have allowed him at least to see that she was warm and dry.
“I've been very busy. I hadn't heard,” he said, slowly. “Is it—was it generally known?”