“Guess we've made another million dollars,” he observed to the pencil-sharpener.
Clayton was not in the habit of paying afternoon calls on women. The number of such calls that he had paid without Natalie during his married life could have been numbered on the fingers of his two hands. Most of the men he knew paid such visits, dropping in somewhere for tea or a highball on the way uptown. He had preferred his club, when he had a little time, the society of other men.
He wondered if he should call Natalie and tell her. But he decided against it. It was possible, for one thing, that Audrey still did not wish her presence in town known. If she did, she would tell Natalie herself. And it was possible, too, that she wanted to discuss Chris, and the reason for his going.
He felt a real sense of relief, when at last he saw her, to find her looking much the same as ever. He hardly knew what he had expected. Audrey, having warned him as to the apartment, did not mention its poverty again. It was a tiny little place, but it had an open fire in the living-room, and plain, pale-yellow walls, and she had given it that curious air of distinction with which she managed, in her casual way, to invest everything about her.
“I hope you observe how neat I am,” she said, as she gave him her hand. “My rooms, of course.”
“Frightfully so.”
He towered in the low room. Audrey sat down and surveyed him as he stood by the fire.
“It is nice to have a man about again.”
“Do you mean to say you have been living here, without even visitors, for two months?”
“You'll laugh. Clay, I'm studying!”