“Jimmie. Go get me that magazine! I can’t bear not to know right now how he looks!”
He brought the magazine from the library. Audrey had removed the traces of her tears and moved their chairs arm to arm. For a long time she stared at the photograph of
“Lawrence Wilton.” It was not large, but the features were quite clear. “It is Larry, all right,” she said slowly. “Only—he’s changed. He looks—softer. Not in character, but in his feelings.”
“Why,” Jimmie repeated, “didn’t your father tell you? He was tremendously moved that night.”
“No doubt. One decent hour with his conscience—alone. Oh, he didn’t tell Mother, I suppose, because he can get a certain revenge on her that way. Revenge for her endless nagging and irritability. And, I suppose, he didn’t like his mental picture of the swoon she’d go into. Mother would probably try to get the governor to get the State Department to get Larry right straight out of the RAF.”
“I don’t know your mother.”
“She’s been ill. Not faking, I believe.” Audrey shrugged. “How is it with you, Jimmie?”
He told her. Told her about his father, and Biff, and Sarah. He found that telling her was like putting down a painfully heavy load and resting. She listened with such concentration, such changes of expression, and yet with such complete and uninterrupting attention, that Jimmie described his inward life, explored it, complained about it, for almost half an hour in a single stretch.
At the end she said, “No wonder you’re low!” She smiled. “I heard about the great toss-out-the night it happened. A man who was there came over to Dan and Adele’s—”
“It wasn’t on a Wednesday! Or a Friday, either!”