teeth, "with any further
recital of what you 'are going' to do. You seem to have a fatal facility
in that line. Your record of accomplishment is pathetically weak.
And--oh, what a fool I've been! I believed. Even after last night, I
believed."

No, she was not going to cry. Hers was no mood for tears. What said the
librettist? "There is beauty in the roaring of the gale, and the tiger
when a-lashing of his tail." Such was the beauty of a woman in anger.
And nothing to get enthusiastic about, thought Mr. Magee.

"I know," he said helplessly, "you're terribly disappointed. And I don't
blame you. But you will find out that you've done me an injustice. I'm
going--"

"One thing," said she, smiling a smile that could have cut glass, "you
are going to do. I know that you won't fail this time, because I shall
personally see you through with it. You're going to stop making a fool
of me."

"Tell me," pleaded Billy Magee. "Tell me who you are--what this is all
about. Can't you see I'm working in the dark? You must--"

She threw open the card-room door.

"An English officer," she remarked loudly, stepping out into the other
room, "taught the admiral the game. At least, so he said. It added so
much romance to it in the eyes of the rocking-chair fleet. Can't you
see--India--the hot sun--the Kipling local color--a silent, tanned,
handsome man eternally playing solitaire on the porch of the barracks?
Has the barracks a porch?"

Roused, humiliated, baffled, Mr. Magee felt his cheeks burn.

"We shall see what we shall see," he muttered.

"Why coin the inevitable into a bromide," she asked.

Mr. Magee joined the group by the fire. Never before in his life had he
been so determined on anything as he was now that the package of money
should return to his keeping. But how? How trace through this maze of
humans the present holder of that precious bundle of collateral? He
looked at Mr. Max, sneering his lemon-colored sneer at the mayor's side;
at the mayor himself, nonchalant as the admiral being photographed; at
Bland, author of the Arabella fiction, sprawling at ease before the
fire; at the tawdry Mrs. Norton, and at Myra Thornhill, who had by her
pleading the night before made him ridiculous. Who of these had the
money now? Who but Cargan and Max, their faces serene, their eyes
eagerly on the preparations for lunch, their plans for leaving Baldpate
Inn no doubt already made?

And then Mr. Magee saw coming down the stairs anot