charge across the ford. Then the road wound along the bank, curling
and writhing with it gracefully through thick forests, over bridges
and once more right through the bright flood. The creek scrambling
among its piled-up boulders was too gay to suggest any amorous mood,
and Marie Louise did not quite dare to drive the car down to the
water's edge at any of the little green plateaus where picnics were
being celebrated on the grass.

"I always lose my way in this park," she said. "I expect I'm lost
now."

She began to regret Davidge's approaching absence, with a strange
loneliness. He was becoming tenderly necessary to her. She sighed,
hardly meaning to speak aloud, "Too bad you're going away so soon."

He was startled to find that his departure meant something to her. He
spoke with an affectionate reassurance.

She stopped the car on a lofty plateau where several ladies and
gentlemen were exercising their horses at hurdle-jumping. The elan of
rush, plunge and recovery could not excite Mamise now.

"I'll tell you what we'll do. The next time I come to Washington you
drive me over to my shipyard and I'll show you the new boat and the
new yard for the rest of the flock."

"That would be glorious. I should like to know something about
ships."

"I can teach you all I know in a little while."

"You know all there is to know, don't you?"

"Lord help us, I should say not! I knew a little about the old
methods, but they're all done away with. The fabricated ship is an
absolute novelty. The old lines are gone, and the old methods. What
few ship-builders we had are trying to forget what they know.
Everybody is green. We had to find out for ourselves and pass it along
to the foremen, and they hand it out to the laborers.

"The whole art is in a confusion. There is going to be a ghastly lot
of mistakes and waste and scandal, but if we win out there'll be such
a cloudburst that the Germans will think it's raining ships. Niagara
Falls will be nothing to the cascade of iron hulls going overboard.
Von Tirpitz with his ruthless policy will be like the old woman who
tried to sweep the tide back with a broom."

He grew so fervent in his vision of the new creation that he hardly
saw the riders as they stormed the hurdles. Marie Louise took fire
from his glow and forgot the petty motive that had impelled her to
bring him to this place. Suddenly he realized how shamelessly eloquent
he had been, and subsided with a slump.

"Wha