want to tie up a fortune just now. We may get into this war, and
if we do--" He rose, and yawned, his arms above his head. "I'm off to
bed," he said. "Big day to-morrow. I'll want Graham at the office at
8:30."

She had sat up in bed, and was staring at him. Her face was pale.

"Do you mean that we are going to get into this war?"

"I think it very likely, my dear."

"But if we do, Graham--"

"We might as well face it. Graham will probably want to go."

"He'll do nothing of the sort," she said sharply. "He's all I have. All.
Do you think I'm going to send him over there to be cannon-fodder? I
won't let him go."

She was trembling violently.

"I won't want him to go, of course. But if the thing comes--he's of age,
you know."

She eyed him with thinly veiled hostility.

"You're hard, Clay," she accused him. "You're hard all the way through.
You're proud, too. Proud and hard. You'd want to be able to say your
son was in the army. It's not because you care anything about the war,
except to make money out of it. What is the war to you, anyhow? You
don't like the English, and as for French--you don't even let me have a
French butler."

He was not the less angry because he realized the essential truth of
part of what she said. He felt no great impulse of sympathy with any
of the combatants. He knew the gravity of the situation rather than its
tragedy. He did not like war, any war. He saw no reason why men should
kill. But this war was a fact. He had had no hand in its making, but it
was made.

His first impulse was to leave her in dignified silence. But she was
crying, and I he disliked leaving her in tears. Dead as was his love for
her, and that night, somehow, he knew that it was dead, she was still
his wife. They had had some fairly happy years together, long ago. And
he felt the need, too, of justification.

"Perhaps you are right, Natalie," he said, after a moment. "I haven't
cared about this war as much as I should. Not the human side of it,
anyhow. But you ought to understand that by making shells for the
Allies, I am not only making money for myself; they need the shells.
And I'll give them the best. I don't intend only to profit by their
misfortunes."

She had hardly listened.

"Then, if we get into it, as you say, you'll encourage Graham to go?"

"I shall allow him to go, if he feels it his duty."

"Oh, duty, duty! I'm sick of the word." She bent forward and suddenly
caught one of his hands. "Y