"Oh, I know," he cut in. "You've said that before. But I'd be court-martialled. I'd lose my career." "What's a career to a man who truly loves?" "It's just as much as it is to anybody else--and more." She could hardly controvert this gracefully, so she sank back with grim resignation. "Well, I've proposed my plan, and you don't like it. Now, suppose you propose something." The silence was oppressive. They sat like stoughton bottles. There the conductor found them some time later. He gave them a careless look, selected a chair at the end of the car, and began to sort his tickets, spreading them out on another chair, making notes with the pencil he took from atop his ear, and shoved back from time to time. Ages seemed to pass, and Mallory had not even a suggestion. By this time Marjorie's temper had evaporated, and when he said: "If we could only stop at some town for half an hour," she said: "Maybe the conductor would hold the train for us." "I hardly think he would." "He looks like an awfully nice man. You ask him." "Oh, what's the use?" Marjorie was getting tired of depending on this charming young man with the very bad luck. She decided to assume command herself. She took recourse naturally to the original feminine methods: "I'll take care of him," she said, with resolution. "A woman can get a man to do almost anything if she flirts a little with him." "Marjorie!" "Now, don't you mind anything I do. Remember, it's all for love of you--even if I have to kiss him." "Marjorie, I won't permit----" "You have no right to boss me--yet. You subside." She gave him the merest touch, but he fell backward into a chair, utterly aghast at the shameless siren into which desperation had altered the timid little thing he thought he had chosen to love. He was being rapidly initiated into the complex and versatile and fearfully wonderful thing a woman really is, and he was saying to himself, "What have I married?" forgetting, for the moment, that he had not married her yet, and that therein lay the whole trouble. CHAPTER XXVI DELILAH AND THE CONDUCTOR Like the best of women and the worst of men, Marjorie was perfectly willing to do evil, that good might come of it. She advanced on the innocent conductor, as the lady from Sorek must have sidled up to Samson, coquetting with one arch hand and snipping the shears with the other. The stupefied Mallory saw Marjorie in a startling imitation of herself at her sweetest; only now it was brazen mimicry, yet how like! She went forward as the shyest young thing in the world, pursed her lips into an ecstatic simper, and began on the unsuspecting official: "Isn't the country perfectly----" "Yes, but I'm getting used to it," the conductor growled, without looking up. His curt indifference jolted Marjorie a trifle, but she rallied her forces, and came back with: "How long do we stop at Ogden?" "Five minutes," very bluntly.