keep on coming here, being in Clayton's house, and
eating his bread, while I'm in love with his wife. It isn't decent."

He flung away his cigaret, and bent forward.

"Don't you see that?" he asked gently. "Not while he is working for the
country, and Graham is abroad."

"I don't see why war needs to deprive me of my friends. I've lost
everything else."

His morals were matters of his private life, and they had been neither
better nor worse than the average. But he had breeding and a sure sense
of the fitness of things, and this present week-end visit, with the
ostentatious care the younger crowd took to allow him time to see
Natalie alone, was galling to him. It put him in a false position;
what hurt more, perhaps, in an unfavorable light. The war had changed
standards, too. Men were being measured, especially by women, and those
who failed to measure up were being eliminated with cruel swiftness,
especially the men who stayed at home.

With all this, too, there was a growing admiration for Clayton Spencer
in their small circle. His name had been mentioned in connection with
an important position in Washington. In the clubs there was considerable
praise and some envy. And Rodney knew that his affair with Natalie was
the subject of much invidious comment.

"Do you love him?" he asked, suddenly.

"I--why, of course I do."

"Do you mean that?"

"I don't see what that has to do with our friendship."

"Oh--friendship! You know how I feel, and yet you go on, bringing up
that silly word. If you love him, you don't--love me, and yet you've let
me hang around all these months, knowing I am mad about you. You don't
play the game, Natalie."

"What do you want to say?"

"If you don't love Clayton, why don't you tell him so? He's honest
enough. And I miss my guess if he wants a wife who--cares for somebody
else."

She sat in the dusk, thinking, and he watched her. She looked very
lovely in the setting which he himself had designed for her. She hated
change; she loathed trouble, of any sort. And she was, those days, just
a little afraid of that strange, quiet Clayton who seemed eternally
engrossed in war and the things of war. She glanced about, at the white
trellises that gleamed in the garden, at the silvery fleur de lis which
was the fountain, at all the lovely things with which Clayton's wealth
had allowed her to surround herself. And suddenly she knew she could not
give them up.

"I don't see why you have to