would look into the matter, and bade
him good night with mingled respect and fear.

When he set out at length to call on Mamise he was grievously troubled
lest he had lost his heart to a clever adventuress. He despised his
suspicions, and yet--somebody had destroyed his ship. He remembered
how shocked she had been by the news. Yet what else could the worst
spy do but pretend to be deeply worried? Davidge had never liked Jake
Nuddle; Mamise's alleged relationship by marriage did not gain
plausibility on reconsideration. The whim to live in a workman's
cottage was even less convincing.

Mr. Larrey had spoiled Davidge's blissful mood and his lover's program
for the evening. Davidge moved slowly toward Mamise's cottage, not as
a suitor, but as a student.

Larrey shadowed him from force of habit, and saw him going with
reluctant feet, pausing now and then, irresolute. Davidge was thinking
hard, calling himself a fool, now for trusting Mamise and now for
listening to Larrey. To suspect Mamise was to be a traitor to his
love: not to suspect her was to be a traitor to his common sense and
to his beloved career.

And the Mamise that awaited the belated Davidge was also in a state of
tangled wits. She, too, had dressed with a finikin care, as Davidge
had, neither of them stopping to think how quaint a custom it is for
people who know each other well and see each other in plain clothes
every day to get themselves up with meticulous skill in the evening
like Christmas parcels for each other's examination. Nature dresses
the birds in the mating season. Mankind with the aid of the
dressmaker and the haberdasher plumes up at will.

But as Caesar had his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell, and Davidge his
Larrey, so Mamise had her sister Abbie.

Abbie came in unexpectedly and regarded Mamise's costume with no
illusions except her own cynical ones:

"What you all diked up about?"

Mamise shrugged her eyebrows, her lips, and her shoulders.

Abbie guessed. "That man comin'?"

Mamise repeated her previous business.

"Kind of low neck, don't you think? And your arms nekked."

Mamise drew over her arms a scarf that gave them color rather than
concealment. Abbie scorned the subterfuge.

"Do you think it's proper to dress like that for a man to come
callin'?"

"I did think so till you spoke," snapped Mamise in all the bitterness
of the ancient feud between loveliness unashamed and unlovely shame.

Abbie felt unwelcome. "Well, I