At the office, during the day, there were no such periods of exhilaration. There only Natalie seemed quite in control of the situation. "She has stout legs and strong feet. She knows how to stand her ground," John Webster thought as he sat at his desk and looked across at her sitting at her desk.
She was not insensible to what was going on about her. Sometimes when he looked suddenly up at her and when she did not know he was looking he saw something that convinced him her hours alone were not now very happy. There was a tightening about the eyes. No doubt she had her own little hell to face.
Still she went about her work every day outwardly unperturbed. "That old Irish woman, with her temper, her drinking, and her love of loud picturesque profanity has managed to put her daughters through a course of sprouts," he decided. It was well Natalie was so level-headed. "The Lord knows she and I may need all of her level-headedness before we are through with our lives," he decided. There was something in women, a kind of power, few men understood. They could stand the gaff. Now Natalie did his work and her own too. When a letter came she answered it and when there was something to be decided she made the decision. Sometimes she looked across at him as though to say, "Your job, the clearing up you will still have to do in your own house, will be more difficult than anything I shall have to face. You let me attend to these minor details of our life now. To do that makes the time of waiting less difficult for me."
She did not say anything of the sort in words, being one not given to words, but there was always something in her eyes that made him understand what she wanted to say.
After that first love-making in the field they were not lovers again while they remained in the Wisconsin town although every evening they went to walk together. After dining at her mother's house
