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. "You won't make him go, Clay?" she begged.
"You--you'll let him make his own decision?"
"If you will."
"What do you mean?"
"If you'll keep your hands off, too. We're not in it, yet. God knows I
hope we won't be. But if I promise not to influence him, you must do the
same thing."
"I haven't any more influence over Graham than that," she said, and
snapped her finger. But she did not look at him.