nd.

"Remember, I am only speaking for myself. My dearest wish is to make you
happy. You are all I have. But I cannot help you very much. Your father
looks at those things differently. He doesn't quite realize that you are
grown up, and have a right to decide some things for yourself."

"He has moved me up, raised my salary."

"That's different. You're valuable to him, naturally. I don't mean he
doesn't love you," she added hastily, as Graham wheeled and stared at
her. "Of course he does, in his own way. It's not my way, but then--I'm
only a woman and a mother."

"You think he'll object?"

"I think he must be handled. If you rush at him, and demand the right to
live your own life--"

"It is my life."

"Precisely. Only he may not see it that way."

He took a step toward her.

"Mother, do you really want me to marry Marion?"

"I think you ought to be married."

"To Marion?"

"To some one you love."

"Circles again," he muttered. "You've changed your mind, for some
reason. What is it, mother?"

He had an uneasy thought that she might have learned of Anna. There was
that day, for instance, when his father had walked into the back room.

Natalie was following a train of thought suggested by her own anxiety.

"You might be married quietly," she suggested. "Once it was done, I am
sure your father would come around. You are both of age, you know."

He eyed her then with open-eyed amazement.

"I'm darned if I understand you," he burst out. And then, in one of his
quick remorses, "I'm sorry, mother. I'm just puzzled, that's all. But
that plan's no good, anyhow. Marion won't do it. She will have to be
welcome in the family, or she won't come."

"She ought to be glad to come any way she can," Natalie said sharply.
And found Graham's eyes on her, studying her.

"You don't want her. That's plain. But you do want her. That's not so
plain. What's the answer, mother?"

And Natalie, with an irritable feeing that she had bungled somehow, got
up and flung away the cigaret.

"I am trying to give you what you want," she said pettishly. "That's
clear enough, I should think."

"There's no other reason?"

"What other reason could there be?"

Dressing to dine at the Hayden's that night, Graham heard Clayton come
in and go into his dressing-room. He had an impulse to go over, tie
in hand as he was, and put the matter squarely before his father. The
marriage-urge--surely a man would understand that. Even Anna, and