ed cheerfully enough. For one thing, the offices closed at noon,
and Anna Klein had gone. He was playing a little game with Anna--a
light-hearted matter of a glance now and then caught and held, a touched
hand, very casually done, and an admiring comment now and then on her
work. And Anna was blossoming like a flower. She sat up late to make
fresh white blouses for the office, and rose early to have abundance of
time to dress. She had taken to using a touch of rouge, too, although
she put it on after she reached the mill, and took it off before she
started for home.

Her father, sullen and irritable these days, would have probably beaten
her for using it.

But Anna had gone, and a telephone call to Marion Hayden had told him
she was not at home. He thought it possible she had gone to the country
club, and accepted his father's suggestion of golf willingly.

From the moment he left the mill Anna had left his mind. He was at that
period when always in the back of his mind there was a girl. During the
mill hours the girl was Anna, because she was there. In the afternoon it
was Marion, just then, but even at that there were entire evenings when,
at the theater, a pretty girl in the chorus held and absorbed his entire
attention--or at a dance a debutante, cloudy and mysterious in white
chiffon, bounded his universe for a few hours.

On this foundation of girl he built the superstructure of his days. Not
evil, but wholly irresponsible. The urge of vital youth had caught him
and held him. And Clayton, sitting that day beside him in the car,
while Graham drove and the golf clubs rattled in their bags at his feet,
remembered again the impulses of his own adolescence, and wondered.
There had been a time when he would have gone to the boy frankly, with
the anxieties he was beginning to feel. There were so many things he
wanted to tell the boy. So many warnings he should have.

But Natalie had stolen him. That was what it amounted to. She had stolen
his confidence, as only a selfish woman could. And against that cabal of
mother and son he felt helpless. It was even more than that. As against
Natalie's indulgence he did not wish to pose as a mentor pointing out
always the way of duty.

"How old are you, Graham?" he said suddenly.

"Twenty-two." Graham glanced at him curiously. His father knew his age,
of course.

"I was married at your age."

"Tough luck," said Graham. And then: "I'm sorry, father, I didn't mean
that. But