“All the ingredients were there, Augustine thought, but the dinner was not what it could have been, what it should have been on the Presidential Special. There was no intimacy, no sense of peace or contentment. Claire seemed rested tonight, after her nap, but she was still quiet and withdrawn; and he was nearly exhausted and his head ached from the bourbon he had drunk too much of and his mind kept working, working, stuttering from one thought to another. They had said little to each other, and ...yet there was a strained atmosphere that seemed to linger between them, as if Claire had difficult things to say to him just as he had difficult things to say to her. Which made the dinner little more than an excuse for delay. Augustine picked at his roast beef and watched her across the table. She had stopped eating—had barely touched her food anyway—and was looking now into her wine glass. Her eyes were dark, unreadable, somewhat distant; she looked in that aspect to be deep in a kind of spiritual meditation.MoreLessRead More Read Less
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