At last, after years of groping toward each other, the sisters were to be brought together. But there was to be an intervention. Even while Marie Louise sat relaxed in a fatigue that she would have called contentment trouble was stealing toward her.

The spider who came and sat beside this Miss m.u.f.fet was Nicky Easton.

He frightened her, but he would not let her run away.

As he dropped to her side she rose with a gasp, but he pressed her back with a hasty grip on her arm and a mandatory prayer:

"Wait once, plea.s.s."

The men who had shadowed Marie Louise had months before given her up as hopelessly correct. But guardian angels were still provided for Nicky Easton; and one of them, seeing this meeting, took Marie Louise back into the select coterie of the suspects.

There's no cure for your bodily aches and pains like terror. It lifts the paralytic from his bed, makes the lame scurry, and gives the blind eyes enough for running. Marie Louise's fatigue fell from her like a burden whose straps are slit.

When Nicky said: "I could not find you in New York. Now we are here we can have a little talkink," she stammered: "Not here! Not now!"

"Why not, plea.s.s?"

"I have an engagement--a friend--she has just gone to telephone a moment."

"You are ashamed of me, then?"

She let him have it. "Yes!"

He winced at the slap in the face.

She went on: "Besides, she knows you. Her husband is an officer in the army. I can't talk to you here."

"Where, then, and when?"

"Any time--any place--but here."

"Any time is no time. You tell me, or I stay now."

"Come to--to my house."

"You have a howiss, then?"

"Yes. I just took it to-day. I shall be there this afternoon--at three, if you will go."

"Very goot. The address is--"

She gave it; he repeated it, mumbled, "At sree o'clock I am there,"

and glided away just as Polly returned.

They were eating a consomme madrilene when the Major arrived. He dutifully ate what his wife had selected for him, and listened amiably to what she had to tell him about her morning, though he was bursting to tell her about his. Polly made a vivid picture of Marie Louise's new home, ending with:

"Everything on G.o.d's earth in it except a piano and a book."

This reminded Marie Louise of the books she had read on ship-building, and she asked if she might borrow them. Polly made a woeful face at this.

"My dear! When a woman starts to reading up on a subject a man is interested in, she's lost--and so is he. Beware of it, my dear."

Tom demurred: "Go right on, Marie Louise, so that you can take an intelligent interest in what your husband is working on."

"My husband!" said Marie Louise. "Aren't you both a trifle premature?"

Polly went glibly on: "Don't listen to Tom, my dear. What does he know about what a man wants his wife to take an intelligent interest in?

Once a woman knows about her husband's business, he's finished with her and ready for the next. Tom's been trying to tell me for ten years what he's working at, and I haven't the faintest idea yet. It always gives him something to hope for. When he comes home of evenings he can always say, 'Perhaps to-night's the night when she'll listen.' But once you listen intelligently and really understand, he's through with you, and he'll quit you for some pink-cheeked ignoramus who hasn't heard about it yet."

Marie Louise, being a woman, knew how to get her message to another woman; the way seems to be to talk right through her talk. The acute creatures have ears to hear with and mouths to talk with, and they apparently find no difficulty in using both at the same time.

Somewhere along about the middle of Polly's discourse Marie Louise began to answer it before it was finished. Why should she wait when she knew what was coming? So she said contemporaneously and covocally:

"But I'm not going to marry a ship-builder, my dear. Don't be absurd!

I'm not planning to take an intelligent interest in Mr. Davidge's business. I'm planning to take an intelligent interest in my own. I'm going to be a ship-builder myself, and I want to learn the A B C's."

They finished that argument at the same time and went on together down the next stretch in a perfect team:

"Oh, well of course, if "Mr. Davidge tells me,"

that's the case," a.s.serted Marie Louise explained, "that Polly, "then you're quite women are needed in ship- crazy--unless you're simply building, and that anybody hunting for a new sensation. can learn. In fact, every- And on that score I'll admit body has to, anyway; so that it sounds rather interest- I've got as good a chance as ing. I may take a whack at a man. I'm as strong as a it myself. I'm quite fed up horse. Fine! Come along, on bandages and that sort of and we'll build a U-boat thing. Get me a job in the chaser together. Mr. Davidge same factory or whatever would be delighted to they call it. Will you?" have you, I'm sure."

This was arrant hubbub to the mere man who was not capable of carrying on a conversation except by the slow, primitive methods of Greek drama, strophe and antistrophe, one talking while the other listened, then _vice versa_.

So he had time to remember that he had something to remember, and to dig it up. He broke in on the dialogue:

"By the way, that reminds me, Marie Louise. There's a man in town looking for you."

"Looking for me!" Marie Louise gasped, alert as an antelope at once.

"What was his name?"

"I can't seem to recall it. I'll have it in a minute. He didn't impress me very favorably, so I didn't tell him you were living with us."

Polly turned on Tom: "Come along, you poor nut! I hate riddles, and so does Marie Louise."

"That's it!" Tom cried. "_Riddle--Nuddle_. His name is Nuddle. Do you know a man named Nuddle?"

The name conveyed nothing to Marie Louise except a suspicion that Mr.

Verrinder had chosen some pseudonym.

"What was his nationality?" she asked. "English?"

"I should say not! He was as Amurrican as a piece of pungkin pie."

Marie Louise felt a little relieved, but still at sea. When Widdicombe asked what message he should take back her curiosity led her to brave her fate and know the worst:

"Tell him to come to my house at any time this afternoon--no, not before five. I have some shopping to do, and the servants to engage."

She did not ask Polly to go with her, and Polly took the hint conveyed in Marie Louise's remark as they left the dining-room, "I've a little telephoning to do."

Polly went her way, and Marie Louise made a pretext of telephoning.