nly the weak they deplored
and loved. Poor Chris!

She lounged into the drawing-room, smiling her slow, cool smile. In
the big, uncarpeted alcove, where stood Natalie's great painted piano,
Marion Hayden was playing softly, carefully posed for the entrance of
the men. Natalie was sitting with her hands folded, in the exact center
of a peacock-blue divan. The others were knitting.

"Very pretty effect, Toots!" Audrey called. And Miss Hayden gave her the
unashamed smile of one woman of the world to another.

Audrey had a malicious impulse. She sat down beside Natalie, and against
the blue divan her green gown shrieked a discord. She was vastly
amused when Natalie found an excuse and moved away, to dispose herself
carefully in a tall, old-gold chair, which framed her like a picture.

"We were talking of men, my dear," said Mrs. Haverford, placidly
knitting.

"Of course," said Audrey, flippantly.

"Of what it is that they want more than anything else in the world."

"Children-sons," put in Mrs. Mackenzie. She was a robust, big woman with
kindly eyes, and she was childless.

"Women!" called Toots Hayden. She was still posed, but she had stopped
playing. Mrs. Haverford's eyes rested on her a moment, disapprovingly.

"What do you say, Natalie?" Audrey asked.

"I hadn't thought about it. Money, probably."

"You are all wrong," said Audrey, and lighted a fresh cigaret. "They
want different things at different ages. That's why marriage is such
a rotten failure. First they want women; any woman will do, really. So
they marry--any woman. Then they want money. After that they want power
and place. And when they've got that they begin to want--love."

"Good gracious, Audrey, what a cynical speech!" said Mrs. Mackenzie. "If
they've been married all that time--"

"Oh, tut!" said Audrey, rudely.

She had the impulse of the unhappy woman to hurt, but she was rather
ashamed of herself, too. These women were her friends. Let them go on
believing that life was a thing of lasting loves, that men were true
to the end, and that the relationships of life were fixed and permanent
things.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I was just being clever! Let's talk about the
war. It's the only thing worth talking about, anyhow."

In the dining-room Clayton Spencer, standing tall and erect, had
watched the women go out. How typical the party was of Natalie, of her
meticulous care in small things and her indifference or real ignorance
as to what