talie looked irritated, Graham determined, and Marion was
slightly insolent and unusually handsome.

"Hurry and change, Clay," Natalie said. "Dinner is waiting."

As he went away he had again the feeling of being shut out of something
which concerned Graham.

Dinner was difficult. Natalie was obviously sulking, and Graham was
rather taciturn. It was Marion who kept the conversation going, and he
surmised in her a repressed excitement, a certain triumph.

At last Natalie roused herself. The meal was almost over, and the
servants had withdrawn.

"I wish you would talk sense to Graham, Clay," she said, fretfully. "I
think he has gone mad."

"I don't call it going mad to want to enlist, father."

"I do. With your father needing you, and with all the men there are who
can go."

"I don't understand. If he wants to enter the army, that's up to him,
isn't it?"

There was a brief silence. Clayton found Natalie's eyes on him, uneasy,
resentful.

"That's just it. I've promised mother not to, unless she gives her
consent. And she won't give it."

"I certainly will not."

Clayton saw her appealing glance at Marion, but that young lady was
lighting a cigaret, her eyelids lowered. He felt as though he were
watching a play, in which he was the audience.

"It's rather a family affair, isn't it?" he asked. "Suppose we wait
until we are alone. After all, there is no hurry."

Marion looked at him, and he caught a resentment in her glance. The two
glances struck fire.

"Say something, Marion," Natalie implored her.

"I don't think my opinion is of any particular importance. As Mr.
Spencer says, it's really a family matter."

Her insolence was gone. Marion was easy. She knew Natalie's game; it
was like her own. But this big square-jawed man at the head of the table
frightened her. And he hated her. He hardly troubled to hide it, for all
his civility. Even that civility was contemptuous.

In the drawing-room things were little better. Natalie had counted on
Marion's cooperation, and she had failed her. She pleaded a headache and
went up-stairs, leaving Clayton to play the host as best he could.

Marion wandered into the music-room, with its bare polished floor, its
lovely painted piano, and played a little--gay, charming little things,
clever and artful. Except when visitors came, the piano was never
touched, but now and then Clayton had visualized Audrey there, singing
in her husky sweet voice her little French songs