der
clusters weeping from the trellises in languorous grace.

Marie Louise, looking from her open window in Rosslyn, felt in the
wind a sense of stroking fingers. The trees were brisk with hope. The
river went its way in a more sparkling flow. The air blew from the
very fountains of youth with a teasing blarney. She thought of Ross
Davidge and smiled tenderly to remember his amiable earnestness. But
she frowned to remember his engagement with Lady Clifton-Wyatt. She
wondered what excuse she could invent to checkmate that woman.

Suddenly inspiration came to her. She remembered that she had
forgotten to pay Davidge for the seat he surrendered her in the
chair-car. She telephoned him at his hotel. He was out. She pursued
him by wire travel till she found him in an office of the Shipping
Board. He talked on the corner of a busy man's desk. She heard the
busy man say with a taunting voice, "A lady for you, Davidge."

She could hear the embarrassment in his voice. She was in for it now,
and she felt silly when she explained why she bothered him. But she
was stubborn, too. When he understood, he laughed with the constraint
of a man bandying enforced gallantries on another man's telephone.

"I'd hate to be as honest as all that."

"It's not honesty," she persisted. "It's selfishness. I can't rest
while the debt is on my mind."

He was perplexed. "I've got to see several men on the Shipping Board.
There's a big fight on between the wooden-ship fellows and the
steel-ship men, and I'm betwixt and between 'em. I won't have time to
run out to see you."

"I shouldn't dream of asking you. I was coming in to town, anyway."

"Oh! Well, then--well--er--when can I meet you?"

"Whenever you say! The Willard at--When shall you be free?"

"Not before four and then only for half an hour."

"Four it is."

"Fine! Thank you ever so much. I'll buy me a lot of steel with all
that money you owe me."

Marie Louise put up the receiver. People have got so used to the
telephone that they can see by it. Marie Louise could visualize
Davidge angry with embarrassment, confronting the important man whose
office he had desecrated with this silly hammockese. She felt that she
had made herself a nuisance and lost a trick. She had taken a deuce
with her highest trump and had not captured the king.

Furthermore, to keep Davidge from meeting Lady Clifton-Wyatt would be
only to-day's battle. There would still be to-morrows and the
day-afters. La