act when she so sullenly shut him
out of her life?

He was singularly simple in his fundamental beliefs. There was a Great
Power somewhere, call it what one might, and it dealt out justice
or mercy as one deserved it. On that, of course, had been built an
elaborate edifice of creed and dogma, but curiously enough it all fell
away now. He was, in those night hours, again the boy who had prayed for
fair weather for circus day and had promised in return to read his Bible
through during the next year. And had done it.

In the daytime, however, he was a man, suffering terribly, and facing
the complexities of his life alone. One thing he knew. This was
decisive. Either, under the stress of a common trouble, he and Natalie
would come together, to make the best they could of the years to come,
or they would be hopelessly alienated.

But that was secondary to Graham. Everything was secondary to Graham,
indeed. He had cabled Audrey, and he drew a long breath when, on the
third day, a cable came from her. She had located Graham at last. He had
been shot in the chest, and there were pneumonia symptoms.

"Shall stay with him,"' she ended, "and shall send daily reports."

Next to his God, he put his faith in Audrey. Almost he prayed to her.

Dunbar, now a captain in the Military Intelligence Bureau, visiting him
in his office one day, found Clayton's face an interesting study. Old
lines of repression, new ones of anxiety, marked him deeply.

"The boy, of course," he thought. And then reflected that it takes time
to carve such lines as were written in the face of the man across the
desk from him. Time and a woman, he considered shrewdly. His mind harked
back to that dinner in the Spencer house when diplomatic relations had
been broken off with. Germany, and war seemed imminent. It was the wife,
probably. He remembered that she had been opposed to war, and to the
boy's going. There were such women in the country. There were fewer
of them all the time, but they existed, women who saw in war only
sacrifice. Women who counted no cost too high for peace. If they only
hurt themselves it did not matter, but they could and did do incredible
damage.

Clayton was going through some papers he had brought, and Dunbar had
time to consider what to him was an interesting problem. Mrs. Spencer
had kept the boy from immediate enlistment. He had wanted to go; Dunbar
knew that. If she had allowed him to go the affair with Anna Klein would
have