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, pleass." 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, pleass?" "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 consommé madrilène 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 God'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."