yes to Audrey's.

"His mother is trying that now," she said. "Ever since his engagement
was broken?"

"Oh, it was broken, was it?"

"Yes. I don't know why. But it's off. Anyhow Mrs. Spencer is telling
everybody he can't be spared."

"And his father?"

"I don't know. He doesn't talk about it, I think."

"Perhaps he wants him to make his own decision."

Delight rose and drew down her veil with hands that Audrey saw were
trembling a little.

"How can he make his own decision?" she asked. "He may think it's his
own, but it's hers, Mrs. Spencer's. She's always talking, always. And
she's plausible. She can make him think black is white, if she wants
to."

"Why don't you talk to him?"

"I? He'd think I'd lost my mind! Besides, that isn't it. If you--like a
man, you want him to do the right thing because he wants to, not because
a girl asks him to."

"I wonder," Audrey said, slowly, "if he's worth it, Delight?"

"Worth what?" She was startled.

"Worth your--worth our worrying about him."

But she did not need Delight's hasty and flushed championship of Graham
to tell her what she already knew.

After she had gone, Audrey sat alone in her empty rooms and faced a
great temptation. She was taking herself out of Clayton's life. She knew
that she would be as lost to him among the thousands of workers in the
munition plant as she would have been in Russia. According to Clare, he
rarely went into the shops themselves, and never at night.

Of course "out of his life" was a phrase. They would meet again. But
not now, not until they had had time to become resigned to what they had
already accepted. The war would not last forever. And then she thought
of their love, which had been born and had grown, always with war at its
background. They had gone along well enough until this winter, and then
everything had changed. Chris, Natalie, Clayton, herself--none of them
were quite what they had been. Was that one of the gains of war, that
sham fell away, and people revealed either the best or the worst in
them?

War destroyed, but it also revealed.

The temptation was to hear Clayton's voice again. She went to the
telephone, and stood with the instrument in her hands, thinking. Would
it comfort him? Or would it only bring her close for a moment, to
emphasize her coming silence?

She put it down, and turned away. When, some time later, the taxicab
came to take her to Perry Street, she was lying on her bed in the dusk,
f