"A bald hero at a summer resort," he commented, "it seems incredible." "Oh, they think he lost his hair fighting for the flag," she laughed. "It's winter, and snowing, or I shouldn't dare _lèse-majesté_. And--over here--is the admiral on the veranda, playing it's a quarter deck. And here the great portrait--Andrew Rutter with a profaning arm over the admiral's shoulder. The old ladies make their complaints to Mr. Rutter in softer tones after seeing that picture." "And this?" asked Magee, moving farther from the group by the fire. "A precious one--I wonder they leave it here in winter. This is the admiral as a young man--clipped from a magazine article. Even without the mustache, you see, he had a certain martial bearing." "And now he's the ruler of the queen's navee," smiled Magee. He looked about. "Is it possible to see the room where the admiral plays his famous game?" "Step softly," she answered. "In here. There stands the very table." They went into the small card-room at the right of the entrance to the office, and Mr. Magee quietly closed the door behind them. The time had come. He felt his heart sink. "Well?" said the girl, with an eagerness she could not conceal. Mr. Magee groped for words. And found--his old friends of the mountain. "I love you," he cried desperately. "You must believe I want to help you. It looks rather the other way now, I'll admit. I want you to have that money. I don't know who you are, nor what this all means, but I want you to have it. I went up-stairs determined to give it to you--" "Really." The word was at least fifty degrees below the temperature of the card-room. "Yes, really. I won't ask you to believe--but I'm telling the truth. I went to the place where I had fatuously hid the money--under a brick of my fireplace. It was gone." "How terribly unfortunate." "Yes, isn't it?" Mr. Magee rejoiced that she took so calm a view of it. "They searched the room, of course. And they found the money. They're on top now. But I'm going--" He stopped. For he had seen her face. She--taking a calm view of it? No, indeed. Billy Magee saw that she was furiously, wildly angry. He remembered always having written it down that beautiful women were even more beautiful in anger. How, he wondered, had he fallen into that error? "Please do not bore me," she said through her teeth, "with any further recital of what you 'are going' to do. You seem to have a fatal facility in that line. Your record of accomplishment is pathetically weak. And--oh, what a fool I've been! I believed. Even after last night, I believed." No, she was not going to cry. Hers was no mood for tears. What said the librettist? "There is beauty in the roaring of the gale, and the tiger when a-lashing of his tail." Such was the beauty of a woman in anger. And nothing to get enthusiastic about, thought Mr. Magee.