g ahead, and listening. Inside of the broken windows the curtains
were stirring in the fresh breeze of early morning, and in the kitchen
the old woman was piling the fallen bricks noisily.

"I had been flirting with her a little--it wasn't much more than that,
and I gave her a watch at Christmas. He found it out, and he beat her.
Awfully. She ran away and sent for me, and I met her. She had to hide
for days. Her face was all bruised. Then she got sick from it. She was
sick for weeks."

"Did he know where she was?"

"I think not, or he'd have gone to get her. But Rudolph Klein knew
something. I took her out to dinner, to a roadhouse, a few days ago,
and she said she saw him there. I didn't. All that time, weeks, I'd
never--I'd never gone to her room. That night I did. I don't know why.
I--"

"Go on."

"Well, I went, but I didn't stay. I couldn't. I guess she thought I was
crazy. I went away, that's all. And the next day I felt that she might
be feeling as though I'd turned her down or something. And I felt
responsible. Maybe you won't understand. I don't quite myself. Anyhow, I
went back, to let her know I wasn't quite a brute, even if---But she was
gone. I'm not trying to excuse myself. It's a rotten story, for I was
engaged to Marion then."

Suddenly he sat down beside Clayton and buried his face in his hands.
For some reason or other Clayton found himself back in the hospital,
that night when Joey lay still and quiet, and Graham was sobbing like a
child, prostrate on the white covering of the bed. With the incredible
rapidity of thought in a mental crisis, he saw the last months, the
boy's desire to go to France thwarted, his attempt to interest himself
in the business, the tool Marion Hayden had made of him, Anna's doglike
devotion, all leading inevitably to catastrophe. And through it all
he saw Natalie, holding Graham back from war, providing him with extra
money, excusing him, using his confidences for her own ends, insidiously
sapping the boy's confidence in his father and himself.

"We'll have to stand up to this together, Graham."

The boy looked up.

"Then--you're not going to throw me over altogether--"

"No."

"But--all this--!"

"If Herman Klein had not done it, there were others who would, probably.
It looks as though you had provided them with a tool, but I suppose we
were vulnerable in a dozen ways."

He rose, and they stood, eyes level, father and son, in the early
morning sunlight. An