r a moment: "Why don't you make Natalie play
golf?"

"She hates it."

He rather wondered if she thought Natalie was one of the things he
managed badly.

The sense of companionship warmed him. Although neither of them realized
it, their mutual loneliness and dissatisfaction had brought them
together, and mentally at least they were clinging, each desperately to
the other. But their talk was disjointed:

"I'll return that hundred soon. I've sold the house."

"I wish you wouldn't worry about it. It's ridiculous, Audrey."

And, a hundred yards or so further on, "They wouldn't have Chris in
Canada. His heart. He's going into the French Ambulance service."

"Good for Chris."

But she came out very frankly, when they started back to the clubhouse.

"It's done me a lot of good, meeting you, Clay. There's something so big
and solid and dependable about you. I wonder--I suppose you don't mind
my using you as a sort of anchor to windward?"

"Good heavens, Audrey! If I could only do something."

"You don't have to do a thing." She smiled up at him, and her old
audacity was quite gone. "You've just got to be. And--you don't have to
send me flowers, you know. I mean, I understand that you're sorry for
me, without that. You're the only person in the world I'd allow to be
sorry for me."

He was touched. There was no coquetry in her manner. She paid her little
tribute quite sincerely and frankly.

"I've been taking stock to-day," she went on, "and I put you among my
assets. One reliable gentleman, six feet tall, weight about a hundred
and seventy, in good condition. Heavens, what a lot of liabilities you
had to off-set!"

He stopped and looked down at her.

"Audrey dear," he said, "what am I to say to all that? What can I do?
How can I help?"

"You might tell me--No, that's silly."

"What is silly?"

But she did not answer. She called "Joey!" and gave him her clubs.

"Joey wants to be a soldier," she observed.

"So he says."

"I want to be a soldier, too, Clay. A good soldier."

He suspected that she was rather close to unusual tears.

As they approached the clubhouse they saw Graham and Marion Hayden
standing outside. Graham was absently dropping balls and swinging at
them. It was too late when Clayton saw the danger and shouted sharply.

A ball caught the caddie on the side of the head and he dropped like a
shot.

All through that night Clayton and Audrey Valentine sat by the boy's
white bed in the ho