een re-convened?"

"I don't know why that should interfere."

"It's rather a serious time." He tried very hard to speak pleasantly.
Her engrossment in her own reflection irritated him, so he did not look
at her. "But of course I'll go."

"Every time is a serious time with you lately," she flung after him. Her
tone was not disagreeable. She was merely restating an old grievance. A
few moments later he heard her calling through the open door.

"I got some wonderful old rugs to-day, Clay."

"Yes?"

"You'll scream when you pay for them."

"I've lost my voice screaming, my dear."

"You'll love these. They have the softest colors, dead rose, and faded
blue, and old copper tones."

"I'm very glad you're pleased."

She was in high good humor when they started. Clayton, trying to meet
her conversational demands found himself wondering if the significance
of what was to happen in Washington that night had struck home to her.
If it had, and she could still be cheerful, then it was because she had
forced a promise from Graham.

He made his decision then; to force her to release the boy from any
promise; to allow him his own choice. But he felt with increasing
anxiety that some of Natalie's weakness of character had descended to
Graham, that in him, as in Natalie, perhaps obstinacy was what he hoped
was strength. He wondered listening to her, what it would be to have
beside him that night some strong and quiet woman, to whom he could
carry his problems, his perplexities. Some one to sit, hand in his, and
set him right as such a woman could, on many things.

And for a moment, he pictured Audrey. Audrey, his wife, driving with him
in their car, to whatever the evening might hold. And after it was
all over, going back with her, away from all the chatter that meant so
little, to the home that shut them in together.

He was very gentle to Natalie that night.

Natalie had been right. It was a small and informal group, gathered
together hastily to discuss the emergency; only Denis Nolan, the
Mackenzies, Clayton and Natalie, and Audrey.

"We brought her out of her shell," said Terry, genially, "because the
country is going to make history to-night. The sort of history Audrey
has been shouting for for months."

The little party was very grave. Yet, of them all, only the Spencers
would be directly affected. The Mackenzies had no children.

"Button, my secretary," Terry announced, "is in Washington. He is to
call me here