Oh, I'm not jealous! Audrey probably thinks of you as a sort of
grandfather, anyhow. It's not that. It is your keeping the thing from
me."

"It was not my secret."

But Natalie was jealous. She had that curious jealousy of her friends
which some women are cursed with, of being first in their regard and
their confidence. A slow and smoldering anger against Audrey, which had
nothing whatever to do with Clayton, darkened her eyes.

"I'm through with Audrey. That's all," she said.

And the man across regarded her with a sort of puzzled wonder.

Her indignation against Clayton took the form of calculation; and she
was quick to pursue her advantage. In the library she produced the new
and enlarged plans for the house.

"Roddie says he has tried to call you at the mill, but you are always
out of your office. So he sent these around to-day."

True to the resolution he had made that night in the hospital, he went
over them carefully. And even their magnitude, while it alarmed him,
brought no protest from him. After all the mill and the new plant were
his toys to play with. He found there something to fill up the emptiness
of his life. If a great house was Natalie's ambition, if it gave her
pleasure and something to live for, she ought to have it.

She had prepared herself for a protest, but he made none, even when the
rather startling estimate was placed before him.

"I just want you to be happy, my dear," he said. "But I hope you'll
arrange not to run over the estimate. It is being pretty expensive as it
is. But after all, success doesn't mean anything, unless we are going to
get something out of it."

They were closer together that evening than they had been for months.
And at last he fell to talking about the mill. Natalie, curled up on
the chaise longue in her boudoir, listened attentively, but with small
comprehension as he poured out his dream, for himself now, for Graham
later. A few years more and he would retire. Graham could take hold
then. He might even go into politics. He would be fifty then, and a
man of fifty should be in his prime. And to retire and do nothing was
impossible. A fellow went to seed.

Eyes on the wood fire, he talked on until at last, roused by Natalie's
silence, he glanced up. She was sound asleep.

Some time later, in his dressing-gown and slippers, he came and roused
her. She smiled up at him like a drowsy child.

"Awfully tired," she said. "Is Graham in?"

"Not yet."

She hel