He rather liked her for not bluffing it through. He could understand her haziness the better from the fact that when he first saw her in the chair-car and leaped to his feet it was because he had identified her once more with the long-lost, long-sought beauty of years long gone--the girl he had seen in the cheap vaudeville theater. This slip of memory had uncovered another memory. He had corrected the palimpsest and recalled her as the Miss Webling whom he had met in London. She had given him the same start then as now, and, as he recalled it, she had snubbed him rather vigorously. So he had kept his distance. But the proffer of the money for the chair-car chair broke the ice a little. He said at last:

"My name is Ross Davidge. I met you at your father's house in London."

This seemed to agitate her peculiarly. She trembled and gasped:

"You don't mean it. I-- Oh yes, of course I remember--"

"Please don't lie about it," he pleaded, bluntly, "for of course you don't."

She laughed, but very nervously.

"Well, we did give very large dinners."

"It was a very large one the night I was there. I was a mile down the street from you, and I said nothing immortal. I was only a business acquaintance of Sir Joseph's, anyway. It was about ships, of course."

He saw that her mind was far away and under strange excitation. But she murmured, distantly:

"Oh, so you are--interested in ships?"

"I make 'em for a living."

"Rilly! How interesting!"

This constraint was irksome. He ventured:

"How is the old boy? Sir Joseph, I mean. He's well, I hope."

Her eyes widened. "Didn't you know? Didn't you read in the papers--about their death together?"

"Theirs? His wife and he died together?"

"Yes."

"In a submarine attack?"

"No, at home. It was in all the papers--about their dying on the same night, from--from ptomaine poisoning."

"No!"

He put a vast amount of shock and regret in the mumbled word. He explained: "I must have been out in the forest or in the mines at the time. Forgive me for opening the old wound. How long ago was it? I see you're out of mourning."

"Sir Joseph abominated black; and besides, few people wear mourning in England during the war."

"That's so. Poor old England! You poor Englishwomen--mothers and daughters! My G.o.d! what you've gone through! And such pluck!"

Before he realized what he was doing his hand went across and touched hers, and he clenched it for just a moment of fierce sympathy. She did not resent the message. Then he muttered:

"I know what it means. I lost my father and mother--not at once, of course--years apart. But to lose them both in one night!"

She made a sharp attempt at self-control:

"Please! I beg you--please don't speak of it."

He was so sorry that he said nothing more. Marie Louise was doubly fascinating to him because she was in sorrow and afraid of something or somebody. Besides, she was inaccessible, and Ross Davidge always felt a challenge from the impossible and the inaccessible.

She called for her check and paid it, and tipped the waiter and rose.

She smiled wretchedly at him as he rose with her. She left the dining-car, and he sat down and cursed himself for a brute and a blunderer.

He kept in the offing, so that if she wanted him she could call him, but he thought it the politer politeness not to italicize his chivalry. He was so distressed that he forgot that she had forgotten to pay him for the chair.

It was good and dark when the train pulled into Washington at last.

The dark gave Marie Louise another reason for dismay. The appearance of a man who had dined at Sir Joseph's, and the necessity for telling him the lie about that death, had brought on a crisis of nerves. She was afraid of the dark, but more afraid of the man who might ask still more questions. She avoided him purposely when she left the train.

A porter took her hand-baggage and led her to the taxi-stand. Polly Widdicombe's car was not waiting. Marie Louise went to the front of the building to see if she might be there. She was appalled at the thought of Polly's not meeting her. She needed her blessed giggle as never before.

It was a very majestic station. Marie Louise had heard people say that it was much too majestic for a railroad station. As if America did not owe more to the iron G.o.d of the rails than to any of her other deities!

Before her was the Capitol, lighted from below, its dome floating cloudily above the white parapets as if mystically sustained. The superb beauty of it clutched her throat. She wanted to do something for it and all the holy ideals it symbolized.

Evidently Polly was not coming. The telegram had probably never reached her. The porter asked her, "Was you thinkin' of a taxi?" and she said, "Yes," only to realize that she had no address to give the driver.

BOOK III

IN WASHINGTON

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'It's beautiful overhead if you're going that way,'"

Davidge quoted. He set out briskly, but Marie Louise hung back. "Aren't you afraid to push on when you can't see where you're going?" she demanded.]

CHAPTER I

She went through her hand-bag again, while the porter computed how many tips he was missing and the cab-starter looked insufferable things about womankind.

She asked if any of them knew where Grinden Hall might be, but they shook their heads. She had a sudden happy idea. She would ask the telephone Information for the number. She hurried to a booth, followed by the despondent porter. She asked for Information and got her, but that was all.

"Please give me the numba of Mrs. Widdicombe's, in Rosslyn."

A Washington dialect eventually told her that the number was a private wire and could not be given.

Marie Louise implored a special dispensation, but it was against the rules.

She asked for the supervisor--who was equally sorry and adamant. Marie Louise left the booth in utter defeat. There was nothing to do but go to a hotel till the morrow.