stigate a
suspicious sound, found him restlessly pacing the library floor.

In August he went abroad, and some time about the middle of the month
while he was in London, he received a cable from Graham. He had been
commissioned a first lieutenant in the infantry. Clayton had been seeing
war at first hand then, and for a few moments he was fairly terrified.
On that first of August the Germans had used liquid fire for the first
time, thus adding a new horror. Men in the trenches swept by it had been
practically annihilated. Attacks against it were practically suicide.
Already the year had seen the last of Kitchener's army practically
destroyed, and the British combing the country for new divisions.

In the deadly give and take of that summer, where gains and losses were
measured by yards, the advantage was steadily on the German side, and
it would be a year before the small force of American regulars could be
augmented to any degree by the great new army. It was the darkest hour.

Following on the heels of Graham's cable came a hysterical one from
Natalie.

"Graham probably ordered abroad. Implore you use influence with
Washington."

He resorted to his old remedy when he was in trouble. He walked the
streets. He tried to allow for Natalie's lack of exaltation by the
nature of her life. If she could have seen what he had seen, surely she
would have felt, as he did, that no sacrifice could be too great to end
this cancer of the world. But deep in his heart he knew that Natalie
was--Natalie. Nothing would change her.

As it happened, he passed Graham on the Atlantic. There was a letter for
him at the office, a boyish, exultant letter:

"Dad dear, I'm married!" it began. "Married and off for France. It is
Delight, of course. It always was Delight, altho I know that sounds
queer. And now I'm off to kill a Hun or two. More than that, I hope. I
want two Germans for every poor devil they got at the works. That's the
minimum. The maximum--!

"You'll look after Delight, I know. She has been perfectly bully, but
it's hard on her. We were married two days ago, and already I feel as
though I've always been married. She's going on with the canteen work,
and I shall try not to be jealous. She's popular! And if you'd seen
the General when we were married you'd have thought he was losing a
daughter.

"I wired Mother, but she was too cut up about my leaving to come. I wish
she had, for it was a strange sort of wedding. The divis