t a bore I am to tell all this to a woman!"

She rose at that. "The day has passed when a man can apologize for
talking business to a woman. I've been in England for years, you know,
and the women over there are doing all the men's work and getting
better wages at it than the men ever did. After the war they'll never
go back to their tatting and prattle. I'm going to your shipyard and
have a look-in, but not the way a pink debutante follows a naval
officer over a battle-ship, staring at him and not at the works. I'm
going on business, and if I like ship-building, I may take it up."

"Great!" he laughed, and slapped her hand where it lay on the wheel.
He apologized again for his roughness.

"I'll forgive anything except an apology," she said.

As she looked proudly down at the hand he had honored with a blow as
with an accolade she saw by her watch that it was after six.

"Great Heavens! it's six and more!" she cried. "Lady Clifton-Wyatt
will never forgive you--or me. I'll take you to her at once."

"Never mind Lady Clifton-Wyatt," he said. "But I've got another
engagement for dinner--with a man, at half past six. I wish I
hadn't."

They were drifting with the twilight into an elegiac mood, suffering
the sweet sorrow of parting.

The gloaming steeped the dense woods, and the romance of sunset and
gathering night saddened the business man's soul, but wakened a new
and unsuspected woman in Marie Louise.

Her fierce imaginations were suddenly concerned with conquests of
ambition, not of love. So fresh a realm was opened to her that she was
herself renewed and restored to that boyish-girlish estate of young
womanhood before love has educated it to desire and the slaveries of
desire. The Aphrodite that lurks in every woman had been put to flight
by the Diana that is also there.

Davidge on the other hand had warmed toward Marie Louise suddenly, as
he saw how ardent she could be. He had known her till now only in her
dejected and terrified, distracted humors. Now he saw her on fire, and
love began to blaze within him.

He felt his first impulse to throw an arm about her and draw her to
his breast, but though the solitude was complete and the opportunity
perfect, he saw that she was in no spirit for dalliance. There is no
colder chaperon for a woman than a new ambition to accomplish
something worth while.

As they drew up at the New Willard she was saying:

"Telephone the minute you come to town again. Good-by.