Clayton rose and folded his paper.

"The car's waiting," he said. "I'll be ready in five minutes."

He went slowly up the stairs. In her pink bedroom Natalie had just
wakened. Madeleine, her elderly French maid, had brought her breakfast,
and she was lying back among the pillows, the litter of the early mail
about her and a morning paper on her knee. He bent over and kissed
her, perfunctorily, and he was quick to see that her resentment of the
evening before had survived the night.

"Sleep well?" he inquired, looking down at her. She evaded his eyes.

"Not particularly."

"Any plans for to-day?"

"I'll just play around. I'm lunching out, and I may run out with Rodney
to Linndale. The landscape men are there today."

She picked up the newspaper as though to end the discussion. He saw then
that she was reading the society news, and he rather more than surmised
that she had not even glanced at the black headings which on the first
page announced the hideous casualties of the Somme.

"Then you've given the planting contract?"

"Some things have to go in in the fall, Clay. For heaven's sake, don't
look like a thunder cloud."

"Have you given the landscape contract?"

"Yes. And please go out. You make my head ache."

"How much is it to be?"