about conscription. Natalie wanted Graham
sent out of the country, so he would be safe. She would purchase for
hint a shameful immunity, if war came. She would stultify the boy to
keep him safe. In that hour of clear vision he saw how she had always
stultified the boy, to keep him safe. He saw her life a series of small
subterfuges, of petty indulgences, of little plots against himself, all
directed toward securing Graham immunity--from trouble at school, from
debt, from his own authority.

A wave of unreasoning anger surged over him, but with it there was pity,
too; pity for the narrowness of her life and her mind, pity for her very
selfishness. And for the first time in his life he felt a shamefaced
pity for himself. He shook himself violently. When a man got sorry for
himself--

CHAPTER XX

Rudolph Klein had not for a moment believed Anna's story about the
watch, and on the day after he discovered it on her wrist he verified
his suspicions. During his noon hour he went up-town and, with the
confident swagger of a certain type of man who feels himself out of
place, entered the jeweler's shop in question.

He had to wait for some little time, and he spent it in surveying
contemptuously the contents of the show-cases. That even his wildest
estimate fell far short of their value he did not suspect, but his lips
curled. This was where the money earned by honest workmen was spent,
that women might gleam with such gewgaws. Wall Street bought them, Wall
Street which was forcing this country into the war to protect its loans
to the Allies. America was to pull England's chestnuts out of the fire
that women, and yet more women, might wear those strings of pearls,
those glittering diamond baubles.

Into his crooked mind there flashed a line from a speech at the Third
Street hall the night before: "War is hell. Let those who want to, go to
hell."

So--Wall Street bought pearls for its women, and the dissolute sons of
the rich bought gold wrist-watches for girls they wanted to seduce.
The expression on his face was so terrible that the clerk behind the
counter, waiting to find what he wanted, was startled.

"I want to look at gold wrist-watches," he said. And eyed the clerk for
a trace of patronage.

"Ladies?"

"Yes."

He finally found one that was a duplicate of Anna's, and examined it
carefully. Yes, it was the same, the maker's name on the dial, the space
for the monogram on the back, everything.

"How mu