nearly happy
as he had been in years. Natalie's petulant moods, when they came,
no longer annoyed him. He was supported, had he only known it, by the
strong inner life he was living, a life that centered about his weekly
meetings with Audrey.

Audrey gave him courage to go on. He left their comradely hours together
better and stronger. All the week centered about that one hour, out
of seven days, when he stood on her hearth-rug, or lay back in a deep
chair, listening or talking--such talk as Natalie might have heard
without resentment.

Some times he felt that that one hour was all he wanted; it carried so
far, helped so greatly. He was so boyishly content in it. And then she
would make a gesture, or there would be, for a second, a deeper note
in her voice, and the mad instinct to catch her to him was almost
overwhelming.

Some times he wondered if she were not very lonely, not knowing that
she, too, lived for days on that one hour. She was not going out,
because of Chris's death, and he knew there were long hours when she sat
alone, struggling determinedly with the socks she was knitting.

Only once did they tread on dangerous ground, and that was on her
birthday. He stopped in a jeweler's on his way up-town and brought her a
black pearl on a thin almost invisible chain, only to have her refuse to
take it.

"I can't Clay!"

"Why not?"

"It's too valuable. I can't take valuable presents from men."

"It's value hasn't anything to do with it."

"I'm not wearing jewelry, anyhow."

"Audrey," he said gravely, "it isn't the pearl. It isn't its value.
That's absurd. Don't you understand that I would like to think that you
have something I have given you?"

When she sat still, thinking over what he had said, he slipped the chain
around her neck and clasped it. Then he stooped down, very gravely, and
kissed her.

"For my silent partner!" he said.

In all those weeks, that was the only time he had kissed her. He knew
quite well the edge of the gulf they stood on, and he was determined not
to put the burden of denial on her. He felt a real contempt for men who
left the strength of refusal to a woman, who pleaded, knowing that
the woman's strength would save them from themselves, and that if she
weakened, the responsibility was hers.

So he fed on the husks of love, and was, if not happy, happier.

Graham, too, was getting on better. For one thing, Anna Klein had been
ill. She lay in her boarding-house, frighte