Wandel had taken George's hint, evidently. George was sorry he had ever let it drop. But was he? Mightn't it be as well in the end? In spite of all this talk of people's leaving their bones in France, there was a fair chance that both Dalrymple and he would bring theirs, unaltered, back to America. "Don't worry," George said. "I shan't press you." "Handsome enough," Dalrymple thanked him in a voice scarcely above a whisper. "But everybody isn't that decent. It's this talk of the division sailing that's turned them nasty." George fingered a pamphlet about poison gases. He didn't much blame debtors for turning nasty. "You want to borrow some more money from me," he said. Dalrymple's face lightened. "If you'd be that good; but it's a lot." "Why," George asked, quietly, "don't you go to someone you're closer to?" Dalrymple flushed. He wouldn't meet George's eyes. "Dicky would give it me," he said, "but I can't ask him; I've made him too many promises. So would Lambert, but it would be absurd for me to go to him." "Why absurd?" George asked, quietly. "Wholly impossible," was all Dalrymple would say. "Quite absurd." There came back to George his ugly sensations at Blodgett's, and he knew he would give Dalrymple a lot of money now, as he had given him a little then, and for precisely the same reason. "I'm afraid I've been a bit hard on my friends," Dalrymple admitted. "As a rule they've dried up." "So you come to one who isn't a friend?" George asked. "Now see here, Morton, that's scarcely fair." "You haven't forgotten that day in my office," George accused him, "when you made a brutal ass of yourself." "Said I was sorry. Don't you ever forget anything?" Dalrymple was angry enough himself now, but his worry apparently forced him on. "I wouldn't have come to you at all, only Driggs said--and you said yourself once, and you can spare it. I know that. See here. Unless somebody helps me these people will go to Division Headquarters or Washington. They'll stop my sailing. They'll----" "Don't cry," George interrupted. "You want money, and you don't give a hang where it comes from. That's it, isn't it?" "I have to have money," Dalrymple acknowledged. "Then you ought to have sense enough to know the only reason I'd give it to you. Do you think I'd care if they held you in this country for your silly debts? What you borrow you have to pay back in one way or another. Don't make any mistake. If I give you money it's to be able to make you pay as I please. You've always had a knife out for me. I don't mind putting one in my own hands. If you want money on those terms come to my office with your accounts Saturday afternoon. We'll see what can be done." Dalrymple was quite white. He moistened his lips. As he left he muttered: "I can't answer back. I have to have money. You've got me where you want." VII