ht. I meet you. Make sure nobody sees you take
that train, yes?"

"Yes."

"You know people follow people sometimes."

"Yes."

"I trust you alvays, Marie Louise."

"All right. Good-by."

"Goot-py, Marie Louise."

CHAPTER II

While Mamise was talking her telephone ear had suffered several sharp
and painful rasps, as if angry rattlesnakes had wakened in the
receiver.

The moment she put it up the bell rang. Supposing that Nicky had some
postscript to add, she lifted the receiver again. Her ear was as
bewildered as your tongue when it expects to taste one thing and
tastes another, for it was Davidge's voice that spoke, asking for her.
She called him by name, and he growled:

"Good Lord! is that you? Who was the fascinating stranger who kept me
waiting so long?"

"Don't you wish you knew?" she laughed. "Where are you now? At the
shipyard?"

"No, I'm in Washington--ran up on business. Can I see you to-night?"

"I hope so--unless we're going out--as I believe we are. Hold the
wire, won't you, while I ask." She came back in due season to say,
"Polly says you are to come to dinner and go to a dance with us
afterward."

"A dance? I'm not invited."

"It's a kind of club affair at a hotel. Polly has the right to take
you--no end of big bugs will be there."

"I'm rusty on dancing, but with you--"

"Thanks. We'll expect you, then. Dinner is at eight. Wrap up well.
It's cold, isn't it?"

He thought it divine of her to think of his comfort. The thought of
her in his arms dancing set his heart to rioting. He was singing as he
dressed, and as he rode put to Grinden Hall, singing a specimen of the
new musical insanity known as "jazz"--so pestilential a music that
even the fiddlers capered and writhed.

The Potomac was full of tumultuous ice, and the old Rosslyn bridge
squealed with cold under the motor. It was good to see the lights of
the Hall at last, and to thaw himself out at the huge fireplace.

"Lucky to get a little wood," said Major Widdicombe. "Don't know what
we'll do when it's gone. Coal is next to impossible."

Then the women came down, Polly and Mamise and two or three other
house guests, and some wives of important people. They laid off their
wraps and then decided to keep them on.

Davidge had been so used to seeing Mamise as a plainly clad,
discouraged office-hack that when she descended the stairs and paused
on the landing a few steps from the floor, to lift her eyebrows and
her li