er door a little later, received the answer to
his note through a very narrow crack, and went away feeling that the way
of the wicked is indeed hard.

Clayton had been watching with growing concern Graham's intimacy
with the gay crowd that revolved around Marion Hayden. It was more
thoughtless than vicious; more pleasure-seeking than wicked; but its
influence was bad, and he knew it.

But he was very busy. At night he was too tired to confront the
inevitable wrangle with Natalie that any protest about Graham always
evoked, and he was anxious not to disturb the new rapprochement with the
boy by direct criticism.

The middle of December, which found the construction work at the new
plant well advanced, saw the social season definitely on, also, and he
found himself night after night going to dinners and then on to balls.
There were fewer private dances than in previous Winters, but society
had taken up various war activities and made them fashionable. The
result was great charity balls.

On these occasions he found himself watching for Audrey, always. She
had, with a sort of diabolical cleverness, succeeded in losing herself.
Her house was sold, he knew, and he had expected that she would let
him know where to find her. She had said she counted on him, and he had
derived an odd sort of comfort from the thought. It had warmed him
to think that, out of all the people he knew, to one woman he meant
something more than success.

But although he searched the gayest crowds with his eyes, those
hilarious groups of which she had been so frequently the center, he did
not find her. And there had been no letter save a brief one without an
address, enclosing her check for the money she had borrowed. She had
apparently gone, not only out of her old life, but out of his as well.

At one of the great charity balls he met Nolan, and they stood together
watching the crowd.

"Pretty expensive, I take it," Nolan said, indicating the scene.
"Orchestra, florist, supper--I wonder how much the Belgians will get."

"Personally, I'd rather send the money and get some sleep."

"Precisely. But would you send the money? We've got to have a quid
pro quo, you know-most of us." He surveyed the crowd with cynical,
dissatisfied eyes. "At the end of two years of the war," he observed,
apropos of nothing, "five million men are dead, and eleven million have
been wounded. A lot of them were doing this sort of thing two years
ago."

"I would like