"

"It doesn't matter. I don't know any of the committee."

He had tried to explain what he meant.

"You might like to feel that you are doing something."

"I thought my allowance was only to dress on. If I'm to attend to
charities, too, you'll have to increase it."

"But," he argued patiently, "if you only sent them twenty-five dollars,
did without some little thing to do it, you'd feel rather more as though
you were giving, wouldn't you?"

"Twenty-five dollars! And be laughed at!"

He had given in then.

"If I put an extra thousand dollars to your account to-morrow, will you
check it out to this fund?"

"It's too much."

"Will you?'

"Yes, of course," she had agreed, indifferently. And he had notified
her that the money was in the bank. But two months later the list of
contributors was published, and neither his name nor Natalie's was among
them.

Toward personal service she had no inclination whatever. She would
promise anything, but the hour of fulfilling always found her with
something else to do. Yet she had kindly impulses, at times, when
something occurred to take her mind from herself. She gave liberally to
street mendicants. She sent her car to be used by those of her friends
who had none. She was lavish with flowers to the sick--although Clayton
paid her florist bills.

She was lavish with money--but never with herself.

In the weeks after the opening of the new year Clayton found himself
watching her. He wondered sometimes just what went on in her mind during
the hours when she sat, her hands folded, gazing into space. He could
not tell. He surmised her planning, always planning; the new house, a
gown, a hat, a party.

But late in January he began to think that she was planning something
else. Old Terry Mackenzie had been there one night, and he had
asserted not only that war was coming, but that we would be driven to
conscription to raise an army.

"They've all had to come to it," he insisted. "And we will, as sure as
God made little fishes. You can't raise a million volunteers for a war
that's three thousand miles away."

"You mean, conscription among the laboring class?" Natalie had asked
naively, and there had been a roar of laughter.

"Not at all," Terry had said. And chuckled. "This war, if it comes, is
every man's burden, rich and poor. Only the rich will give most, because
they have most to give."

"I think that's ridiculous," Natalie had said.

It was after that that Clay