amise's room to
demand an accounting.

"I was just on the point of telephoning the police to see if you had
been found in the river."

Mamise did not bother either to explain her past lies or tell any new
ones. She majestically answered:

"Polly darling, I have been engaged in affairs of state, which I am
not at liberty to divulge to the common public."

"Rot!" said Polly. "I believe the 'affairs,' but not the 'state.'"

Mamise was above insult. "Some day you will know. You've heard of
Helen of Troy, the lady with the face that launched a thousand
ships? Well, this face of mine will launch at least half a dozen
freight-boats."

Polly yawned. "I'll call my doctor in the morning and have you taken
away quietly. Your mind's wandering, as well as the rest of you."

Mamise chuckled like a child with a great secret, and Polly waddled
back to her bed.

Next morning Mamise woke into a world warm with her own importance,
though the thermometer was farther down than Washington's oldest
records. She called Davidge on the long-distance telephone, and there
was a zero in his voice that she had never heard before.

"This is Mamise," she sang.

"Yes?" Simply that and nothing more.

She laughed aloud, glad that he cared enough for her to be so angry at
her. She forgot the decencies of telephone etiquette enough to sing
out:

"Do you really love me so madly?"

He loathed sentimentalities over the telephone, and she knew it, and
was always indulging in them. But the fat was on the wire now, and he
came back at her with a still icier tone:

"There's only one good excuse for what you've done. Are you
telephoning from a hospital?"

"No, from Polly's."

"Then I can't imagine any excuse."

"But you're a business man, not an imaginator," she railed. "You
evidently don't know me. I'm 'Belle Boyd, the Rebel Spy,' and also
'Joan of Arkansas,' and a few other patriots. I've got news for you
that will melt the icicles off your eyebrows."

"News?" he answered, with no curiosity modifying his anger.

"War news. May I come down and tell you about it?"

"This is a free country."

"Fine! You're simply adorable when you try to sulk. What time would be
most convenient?"

"I make no more appointments with you, young woman."

"All right. Then I'll wait at my shanty till you come."

"I was going to rent it."

"You just dare! I am coming back to work. The strike is over."

"You'd better come to the office as soon as you get