ace-down and arms outstretched, a lonely and pathetic figure, all her
courage dead for the moment, dead but for the desire to hear Clayton's
voice again before the silence closed down.

She got up and pinned on her hat for the last time, before the mirror of
the little inlaid dressing-table. And she smiled rather forlornly at her
reflection in the glass.

"Well, I've got the present, anyhow," she considered. "I'm not going
either to wallow in the past or peer into the future. I'm going to
work."

The prospect cheered her. After all, work was the great solution. It was
the great healer, too. That was why men bore their griefs better than
women. They could work.

She took a final glance around her stripped and cheerless rooms. How
really little things mattered! All her life she had been burdened with
things. Now at last she was free of them.

The shabby room on Perry Street called her. Work called, beckoned to her
with calloused, useful hands. She closed and locked the door and went
quietly down the stairs.

CHAPTER XL

One day late in May, Clayton, walking up-town in lieu of the golf he had
been forced to abandon, met Doctor Haverford on the street, and found
his way barred by that rather worried-looking gentleman.

"I was just going to see you, Clayton," he said. "About two things. I'll
walk back a few blocks with you."

He was excited, rather exalted.

"I'm going in," he announced. "Regimental chaplain. I've got a year's
leave of absence. I'm rather vague about what a chaplain does, but I
rather fancy he can be useful."

"You'll get over, of course. You're lucky. And you'll find plenty to
do."

"I've been rather anxious," Doctor Haverford confided. "I've been a
clergyman so long that I don't know just how I'll measure up as a man.
You know what I mean. I am making no reflection on the church. But I've
been sheltered and--well, I've been looked after. I don't think I am
physically brave. It would be a fine thing," he said wryly, "if the
chaplain were to turn and run under fire!"

"I shouldn't worry about that."

"My salary is to go on. But I don't like that, either. If I hadn't a
family I wouldn't accept it. Delight thinks I shouldn't, anyhow. As a
matter of fact, there ought to be no half-way measures about our giving
ourselves. If I had a son to give it would be different."

Clayton looked straight ahead. He knew that the rector had, for the
moment, forgotten that he had a son to give and tha