emove himself gracefully from her heart because of his
disability.

She amazed him by her sudden laughter. He was always slow to
understand why his most solemn or angry humor gave her so much
amusement.

While her nurse and his were talking at a little distance it pleased
her to lean close to Davidge and tease him excruciatingly with a
flirtatious manner.

"Before very long I'm going to take up that bet we made."

"What bet?"

"That the next proposal would come from me. I'm going to propose the
first of next week."

"If you do, I'll refuse you."

Though she understood him perfectly, it pleased her to assume a motive
he had never dreamed of.

"Oh, you mustn't think that I'm going to be an invalid for life. The
doctor says I'll be as well as ever in a little while."

Davidge could not see how he was to tell her that he didn't mean that
without telling her just what he did mean. In his tormented petulance
he turned his back on her and groaned.

"Oh, go away and let me alone."

She was laughing beyond the limits called ladylike as she began to
wheel her chair toward the door. The nurse ran after her, asking:

"What on earth?"

Mamise assured, "Nothing on earth, but a lot in heaven," and would not
explain the riddle.

CHAPTER VII

Davidge was the modern ideal of an executive. He appeared never to do
any work. He kept an empty desk and when he was away no one missed
him. He would not use a roll-top desk, but sat at a flat table with
nothing on it but a memorandum-pad, a calendar, an "in" and an "out"
basket, both empty most of the time.

He had his work so organized that it went on in his absence as if he
were there. He insisted that the executives of the departments should
follow the same rule. If they were struck down in battle their places
were automatically supplied as in the regular army.

So when Davidge went to the hospital the office machine went on as if
he had gone to lunch.

Mamise called on him oftener than he had called on her. She left the
hospital in a few days after the explosion, but she did not step into
his office and run the corporation for him as a well-regulated heroine
of recent fiction would have done. She did not feel that she knew
enough. And she did not know enough. She kept to her job with the
riveting-gang and expected to be discharged any day for lack of pull
with the new boss.

But while she lasted she was one of the gang, and proud of it. She was
neither masc