"If you do that, you have lost her forever. It is the police she fears. She would never forgive you for putting her into their hands, even if you could afterward extricate her. You must not dream of such a thing." So Eveley gave it up and tried to reconcile herself to patient waiting, and to prayers of faith, determined to believe that the persistent search going on in all sections of the town would be effective, and believing still more fervently that God must return to her again the sister she had learned to love. This time, because Eveley was suffering no one connected the disappearance of Marie with Eveley's theory of duty. And to herself Eveley made no claims, not even for her favorite Exception. For if Marie had loved her, would she not have left at least one word of sympathy, and affection, in farewell? Indeed, if she had loved her, would she not have preferred the investigation of the Secret Service to separation? For Eveley would have braved every court in the country for her little foreign sister. She tried to interest herself in the affairs of her friends, as of old. She tried to return to her old whimsical routine of living alone in her Cloud Cote, but from being a little nook of laughter and love, it became ineffably dreary and dull. And Eveley was suffering not only because her love had been slighted and her hospitality abused, but because everything she had undertaken had failed. Americanization--what was it? For to Marie she had given every good thing in her power--and Marie had used her as long as she could be of service, and then had gone back to her own life, to her own people. CHAPTER XX SHE PROVES HER PRINCIPLE All of Eveley's friends, realizing the loneliness and the sickness of heart which possessed her, united to plan little entertainments and bits of amusement for her. And Eveley accepted their plans gratefully, and acted upon their suggestions gladly, but the bitterness remained in her heart. "I loved that girl," she would say to herself. "How could she do such a thing to any one who loved her? It isn't as if I had only tried to do what was right and kind by her. She owed me something for all that love." One evening she went to Eileen's for a rollicking dinner with the twins in clamorous evidence. Eileen's home was a new creation; every day, she said frankly, was a new cycle of life. Her years of sober, studied business had not at all prepared her for the raptures and the uncertainties and the annoyances and the thrills of a household that had young twins in it.