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Graham flushed. He felt rather small and cheap, but with that there was a growing admiration of his father. Suddenly he saw that this man beside him was a big man, one to be proud of. For already he knew the cost of the decision. He sat still, turning this new angle of war over in his mind.

"I'd like to see some of your directors when you put that up to them!"

Clayton nodded rather grimly. He did not anticipate a pleasant hour.

"How about mother?"

"I think we may take it for granted that she feels as we do."

Graham pondered that, too.

"What about the new place?"

"It's too soon to discuss that. We are obligated to do a certain amount. Of course it would be wise to cut where we can."

Graham smiled.

"She'll raise the deuce of a row," was his comment.

It had never occurred to him before to take sides between his father and his mother, but there was rising in him a new and ardent partisanship of his father, a feeling that they were, in a way, men together. He had, more than once, been tempted to go to him with the Anna Klein situation. He would have, probably, but a fellow felt an awful fool going to somebody and telling him that a girl was in love with him, and what the dickens was he to do about it?

He wondered, too, if anybody would believe that his relationship with Anna was straight, under the circumstances. For weeks now he had been sending her money, out of a sheer sense of responsibility for her beating and her illness. He took no credit for altruism. He knew quite well the possibilities of the situation. He made no promises to himself. But such attraction as Anna had had for him had been of her prettiness, and their propinquity. Again she was girl, and that was all. And the attraction was very faint now. He was only sorry for her.

When she could get about she took to calling him up daily from a drug-store at a near-by corner, and once he met her after dark and they walked a few blocks together. She was still weak, but she was spiritualized, too. He liked her a great deal that night.

"Do you know you've loaned me over a hundred dollars, Graham?" she asked.

"That's not a loan. I owed you that."

"I'll pay it back. I'm going to start to-morrow to look for work, and it won't cost me much to live."

"If you send it back, I'll buy you another watch!"

And, tragic as the subject was, they both laughed.

"I'd have died if I hadn't had you to think about when I was sick, Graham. I wanted to die - except for you."

He had kissed her then, rather because he knew she expected him to. When they got back to the house she said:

"You wouldn't care to come up?"

"I don't think I had better, Anna."

"The landlady doesn't object. There isn't any parlor. All the girls have their callers in their rooms."

"I have to go out to-night," he said evasively. "I'll come some other time."

As he started away he glanced back at her. She was standing in the doorway, eying him wistfully, a lonely and depressed little figure. He was tempted to throw discretion to the wind and go back. But he did not.

On the day when Clayton had broached the subject of offering their output to the government at only a banker's profit, Anna called him up at his new office in the munition plant.

He was rather annoyed. His new secretary was sitting across the desk, and it was difficult to make his responses noncommittal.

"Graham!"

"Yes."

"Is anybody there? Can you talk?"

"Not very well."

"Then listen; I'll talk. I want to see you."

"I'm busy all day. Sorry."

"Listen, Graham, I must see you. I've something to tell you."

"All right, go ahead."

"It's about Rudolph. I was out looking for a position yesterday and I met him."

"Yes?"

He looked up. Miss Peterson was absently scribbling on the cover of her book, and listening intently.

"He was terrible, Graham. He accused me of all sorts of things, about you."

He almost groaned aloud over the predicament he was in. It began to look serious.

"Suppose I pick you up and we have dinner somewhere?"