. Fanny,
at the rail, found her two among the crowd, and smiled down upon them,
mistily. Ella was waving energetically. Heyl was standing quite still,
looking up. The ship swung clear, crept away from the dock. The good-bys
swelled to a roar. Fanny leaned far over the rail and waved too, a sob
in her throat. Then she saw that she was waving with the hand that held
the yellow telegram. She crumpled it in the other hand, and substituted
her handkerchief. Heyl still stood, hat in hand, motionless.

"Why don't you wave good-by?" she called, though he could not possibly
hear. "Wave good-by!" And then the hand with the handkerchief went to
her face, and she was weeping. I think it was that old drama-thrill in
her, dormant for so long. But at that Heyl swung his hat above his head,
three times, like a schoolboy, and, grasping Ella's plump and resisting
arm, marched abruptly away.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The first week in June found her back in New York. That month of
absence had worked a subtle change. The two weeks spent in crossing and
recrossing had provided her with a let-down that had been almost jarring
in its completeness. Everything competitive had seemed to fade away with
the receding shore, and to loom up again only when the skyline became a
thing of smoke-banks, spires, and shafts. She had had only two weeks for
the actual transaction of her business. She must have been something of
a revelation to those Paris and Berlin manufacturers, accustomed though
they were to the brisk and irresistible methods of the American business
woman. She was, after all, absurdly young to be talking in terms
of millions, and she was amazingly well dressed. This last passed
unnoticed, or was taken for granted in Paris, but in Berlin, home of the
frump and the flour-sack figure, she was stared at, appreciatively. Her
business, except for one or two unimportant side lines, had to do with
two factories on whose product the Haynes-Cooper company had long had a
covetous eye. Quantity, as usual, was the keynote of their demand,
and Fanny's task was that of talking in six-figure terms to these
conservative and over-wary foreign manufacturers. That she had
successfully accomplished this, and that she had managed to impress them
also with the important part that time and promptness in delivery played
in a swift-moving machine like the Haynes-Cooper concern, was due to
many things beside her natural business ability. Self-confidence was
there,