ng. The dour autumn seemed to wrench hopes from the heart like
shriveled leaves, and to fill the air with swirling discouragements.
The men at work about the ships were numb and often stopped to blow
upon their aching fingers. The red-hot rivets went in showers that
threatened to blister, but gave no warmth.

The ambitions of Mamise congealed along with the other stirring
things. She was sorely tempted to give up the unwomanly battle and
accept Davidge's offer of a wedding-ring. She had, of course, her
Webling inheritance to fall back upon, but she had come to hate it so
as tainted money that she would not touch it or its interest. She put
it all into Liberty Bonds and gave a good many of those to various
charities. Not the least of her delights in her new career had been
her emancipation from slavery to the money Mr. Verrinder had spoken of
as her wages for aiding Sir Joseph Webling.

A marriage with Davidge was an altogether different slavery, a
thoroughly patriotic livelihood. It would permit her to have servants
to wait on her and build her fires. She would go out only when she
wished, and sleep late of mornings. She would have multitudinous furs
and a closed and heated limousine to carry her through the white
world. She could salve her conscience by taking up some of the more
comfortable forms of war work. She could manage a Red Cross
bandage-factory or a knitting-room or serve hot dishes in a cozy
canteen.

At times from sheer creature discomfort she inclined toward matrimony,
as many another woman has done. These craven moods alternated with
periods of self-rebuke. She told herself that such a marriage would
dishonor her and cheat Davidge.

Besides, marriage was not all wedding-bells and luxury; it had its
gall as well as its honey. Even in divorceful America marriage still
possesses for women a certain finality. Only one marriage in nine
ended in divorce that year.

Mamise knew men and women, married, single, and betwixt. She was far,
indeed, from that more or less imaginary character so frequent in
fiction and so rare in reality, the young woman who knows nothing of
life and mankind. Like every other woman that ever lived, she knew a
good deal more than she would confess, and had had more experience
than she would admit under oath. In fact, she did not deny that she
knew more than she wished she knew, and Davidge had found her very
tantalizing about just how much her experience totaled up.

She had obse