She could fancy Marcia’s astonishment, her shocked “Oh, but Anne, there’s Berkeley Hayden!”

And indeed, there was Berkeley Hayden!

When Anne had determined to have her marriage to Peter Champneys annulled, Marcia had upheld her, though Jason hadn’t liked it at all.  If he hadn’t exactly opposed her course, he had tried to dissuade her from it.  But she had persisted, and as the case was simple and quite clear her freedom was a foregone conclusion, though there were, of course, the usual formalities, the usual wearisome delays.

She had closed the Champneys house, and gone to Marcia, who wanted her.  Jason, too, had insisted that she should make her home with them for the time being.  And then had come the war, and she and Marcia found themselves swept into the whirlpool of work it involved.  But not even the tremendous news that filled all the newspapers had kept the Champneys romance from being featured.  Her case received very much more notice than pleased her.  She was weary of her own photographs, sick of the interest she aroused.

Hayden kept discreetly in the background.  He behaved beautifully.  But he knew that Anne was going to marry him.  Jason and Marcia knew it.  Anne herself knew it.  Now that the war was on, a good many of his plans would have to be postponed, but when Anne had secured her freedom, and things had righted themselves, they two would take up life as he wished to live it.  All the women of his family had occupied prominent social positions:  his wife should surpass them all.  She should be the acknowledged leader, the most brilliant figure of her day.  Nothing less than this would satisfy him.

For all his esthetic tastes, Hayden was an immensely able and capable man of business.  He had not the warmth of heart that at times obscured Jason Vandervelde’s judgment, nor the touch of unworldliness that marked the behavior of the Champneys men.  His intellect had a cold, clear brilliancy, diamond-bright, diamond-hard; to this he added tact, and the power of organizing and directing and of getting results.  In certain crises such men are invaluable.

Hayden hated war.  It was, so to speak, an uncouth and barbarous gesture, a bestial and bellowing voice.  He felt constrained to offer his services, and even before America became actually involved he was able to render valuable aid.  There were delicate and dangerous missions where his tact, his diplomacy, and his shrewd, cold, unimpassioned intelligence won the stakes for which he played.  This in itself was good; but for the time being it took him away from Anne.  He saw her only occasionally.  She, like him, was immersed in work.  Once or twice he was able to snatch her from the thick of things and carry her off with him to lunch or to dinner.  She enjoyed these small oases in the desert of work.  She liked to watch his clever, composed face, to listen to his modulated voice.  The serene ease of his