not argued well, but sometimes that is
best for the arguments, for then the judge becomes their attorney.
Mamise tossed on a grid of perplexities. Neither her mind nor her body
could find comfort.

She rose early to escape her thoughts. It was a cold, raw morning, and
Abbie came dashing through the drizzle with her shawl over her head
and her cheeks besprent with tears and rain. She flung herself on
Mamise and sobbed:

"I ain't slep' a wink all night. I been thinkin' of Jake and the
childern. I was mad at you last night, but I'm sorry for what I said.
You're my own sister--all I got in the world besides the three
childern. And I'm all you got, and I know it ain't in you to go and
send the father o' my childern to jail and ruin my life. I've had a
hard life, and so've you, Mamise honey, but we got to be friends and
love one another, for we're all that's left of our fambly, and it
couldn't be that one sister would drive the other to distraction and
drag the family name in the mud. It couldn't be, could it, Mamise?
Tell me you was only teasin' me! I didn't mean what I said last night
about you bein' indecent, and you didn't mean what you said about
Jake, did you, Mamise? Say you didn't, or I'll just die right here."

She had left the door open, and a gust of windy rain came lashing in.
The world outside was cold and wet, and Abbie was warm and afraid and
irresistibly pitiful.

Mamise could only hug and kiss her and say:

"I'll see! I'll see!"

When people do not know what their chief mysteries, themselves, will
do they say, "I'll see."

Mamise thought of Davidge, and she could not promise to leave him in
ignorance of the menace imminent above him. But when at last she tore
herself from Abbie's clutching hands and hurried away to the office
she looked back and saw Abbie out in the rain, staring after her in
terror and shaking her head helplessly. She could not promise herself
that she would tell Davidge.

CHAPTER VII

She reached the office late in spite of her early start. Davidge had
gone. He had gone to Pittsburgh to try to plead for more steel for
more ships.

The head clerk told her this. He was in an ugly mood, sarcastic about
Mamise's tardiness, and bitter with the knowledge that all the work of
building another _Clara_ had to be carried through with its endless
detail and the chance of the same futility. He was as sick about it as
a Carlyle who must rewrite a burned-up history, an Audubon who