lfillment, and of a
home and a woman.

Natalie was not happy, but she seemed contented enough. Her life
satisfied her. The new house in the day-time, bridge, the theater in the
evening or the opera, dinners, dances, clothes--they seemed to be enough
for her. But his life was not enough for him. What did he want anyhow?
In God's name, what did he want?

One night, impatient with himself, he picked up the book of love lyrics
in its mauve cover, from his bedside table. He read one, then another.
He read them slowly, engrossingly. It was as though something starved in
him was feeding eagerly on this poor food. Their passion stirred him as
in his earlier years he had never been stirred. For just a little time,
while Natalie danced that night, Clayton Spencer faced the tragedy of
the man in his prime, still strong and lusty with life, with the deeper
passions of the deepening years, who has outgrown and outloved the woman
he married.

A man's house must be built on love. Without love it can not stand.

Natalie, coming in much later and seeing his light still on, found him
sleeping, with one arm under his head, and a small black hole burned in
the monogrammed linen sheet. The book of poems had slipped to the floor.

The next day she missed it from its place, and Clayton's man,
interrogated, said he had asked to have it put away somewhere. He did
not care for it. Natalie raised her eyebrows. She had thought the poems
rather pretty.

One resolution Clayton made, as a result of that night. He would not see
Audrey again if he could help it. He was not in love with her and he did
not intend to be. He was determinedly honest with himself. Men in
his discontented state were only too apt to build up a dream-woman,
compounded of their own starved fancy, and translate her into terms of
the first attractive woman who happened to cross the path. He was not
going to be a driveling idiot, like Chris and some of the other men he
knew. Things were bad, but they could be much worse.

It happened then that when Audrey called him at the mill a day or so
later it was a very formal voice that came back to her over the wire.
She was quick to catch his tone.

"I suppose you hate being called in business hours, Clay!"

"Not at all."

"That means yes, you know. But I'm going even further. I'm coming down
to see you."

"Why, is anything wrong?"

He could hear her laughter, a warm little chuckle.

"Don't be so urgent," she said gayly. "