tly:

"Oh, so you are--interested in ships?"

"I make 'em for a living."

"Rilly! How interesting!"

This constraint was irksome. He ventured:

"How is the old boy? Sir Joseph, I mean. He's well, I hope."

Her eyes widened. "Didn't you know? Didn't you read in the papers--about
their death together?"

"Theirs? His wife and he died together?"

"Yes."

"In a submarine attack?"

"No, at home. It was in all the papers--about their dying on the same
night, from--from ptomaine poisoning."

"No!"

He put a vast amount of shock and regret in the mumbled word. He
explained: "I must have been out in the forest or in the mines at the
time. Forgive me for opening the old wound. How long ago was it? I see
you're out of mourning."

"Sir Joseph abominated black; and besides, few people wear mourning in
England during the war."

"That's so. Poor old England! You poor Englishwomen--mothers and
daughters! My God! what you've gone through! And such pluck!"

Before he realized what he was doing his hand went across and touched
hers, and he clenched it for just a moment of fierce sympathy. She did
not resent the message. Then he muttered:

"I know what it means. I lost my father and mother--not at once, of
course--years apart. But to lose them both in one night!"

She made a sharp attempt at self-control:

"Please! I beg you--please don't speak of it."

He was so sorry that he said nothing more. Marie Louise was doubly
fascinating to him because she was in sorrow and afraid of something
or somebody. Besides, she was inaccessible, and Ross Davidge always
felt a challenge from the impossible and the inaccessible.

She called for her check and paid it, and tipped the waiter and rose.
She smiled wretchedly at him as he rose with her. She left the
dining-car, and he sat down and cursed himself for a brute and a
blunderer.

He kept in the offing, so that if she wanted him she could call him,
but he thought it the politer politeness not to italicize his
chivalry. He was so distressed that he forgot that she had forgotten
to pay him for the chair.

It was good and dark when the train pulled into Washington at last.
The dark gave Marie Louise another reason for dismay. The appearance
of a man who had dined at Sir Joseph's, and the necessity for telling
him the lie about that death, had brought on a crisis of nerves. She
was afraid of the dark, but more afraid of the man who might ask
still more questions. She avoided h