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He flung away his cigaret, and bent forward.

"Don't you see that?" he asked gently. "Not while he is working for the country, and Graham is abroad."

"I don't see why war needs to deprive me of my friends. I've lost everything else."

His morals were matters of his private life, and they had been neither better nor worse than the average. But he had breeding and a sure sense of the fitness of things, and this present week-end visit, with the ostentatious care the younger crowd took to allow him time to see Natalie alone, was galling to him. It put him in a false position; what hurt more, perhaps, in an unfavorable light. The war had changed standards, too. Men were being measured, especially by women, and those who failed to measure up were being eliminated with cruel swiftness, especially the men who stayed at home.

With all this, too, there was a growing admiration for Clayton Spencer in their small circle. His name had been mentioned in connection with an important position in Washington. In the clubs there was considerable praise and some envy. And Rodney knew that his affair with Natalie was the subject of much invidious comment.

"Do you love him?" he asked, suddenly.

"I - why, of course I do."

"Do you mean that?"

"I don't see what that has to do with our friendship."

"Oh - friendship! You know how I feel, and yet you go on, bringing up that silly word. If you love him, you don't- love me, and yet you've let me hang around all these months, knowing I am mad about you. You don't play the game, Natalie."

"What do you want to say?"

"If you don't love Clayton, why don't you tell him so? He's honest enough. And I miss my guess if he wants a wife who - cares for somebody else."

She sat in the dusk, thinking, and he watched her. She looked very lovely in the setting which he himself had designed for her. She hated change; she loathed trouble, of any sort. And she was, those days, just a little afraid of that strange, quiet Clayton who seemed eternally engrossed in war and the things of war. She glanced about, at the white trellises that gleamed in the garden, at the silvery fleur de lis which was the fountain, at all the lovely things with which Clayton's wealth had allowed her to surround herself. And suddenly she knew she could not give them up.

"I don't see why you have to spoil everything," she said fretfully. "It had been so perfect. Of course I'm not going to say anything to Clay. He has enough to worry him now," she added, virtuously.

Suddenly Rodney stooped and kissed her, almost savagely.

"Then I'm going," he said. And to her great surprise he went.

Alone in his room up-stairs Rodney had, in his anger, a glimpse of insight. He saw her, her life filled with small emotions, lacking the courage for big ones. He saw her, like a child, clutching one piece of cake and holding out a hand for another. He saw her, taking always, giving never.

"She's not worth it," he muttered.

On the way to the station he reflected bitterly over the past year. He did not blame her so much as he blamed himself. He had been playing a game, an attractive game. During the first months of it his interest in Natalie had been subordinate to his interest in her house. He had been creating a beautiful thing, and he had had a very real joy in it. But lately he knew that his work on the house had been that he might build a background for Natalie. He had put into it the best of his ability, and she was not worth it.

For some days he neither wrote nor called her up. He was not happy, but he had a sense of relief. He held his head a trifle higher, was his own man again, and he began to make tentative inquiries as to whether he could be useful in the national emergency or not. He was half-hearted at first, but he found out something. The mere fact that he wanted to work in some capacity brought back some of his old friends. They had seemed to drop away, before, but they came back heartily and with hands out.

"Work?" said Terry Mackenzie, at the club one day, looking up from the billiard table, where