Davidge wrote her about the launching, but it was a business man's letter, with the poetry all smothered. He told her that there had been an accident or two, and nearly a disaster--an unexploded infernal-machine had been found. A scheme to wreck the launching-ways had been detected on the final inspection. Marie Louise read the letter aloud to Abbie, and, even though she knew the ship was safe, trembled as if it were still in jeopardy. Her shaken faith in humanity was still capable of feeling bewilderment at the extremes of German savagery. She cried out to her sister: "How on earth can anybody be fiendish enough to have tried to destroy that ship even before it was launched? How could a German spy have got into the yard?" "It didn't have to have been a German," said Abbie, bitterly. "Who else would have wanted to play such a dastardly trick? No American would!" "Well, it depends on what you call Amurrican," said Abbie. "There's some them Independent workmen so independent they ain't got any country any more 'n what Cain had." "You can't suppose that Mr. Davidge has enemies among his own people?" "O' course he has! Slews of 'em. Some them workmen can't forgive the man that gives 'em a job." "But he pays big wages. Think of what Jake gets." "Oh, him! If he got all they was, he'd holler he was bein' cheated. Hollerin' and hatin' always come easy to Jake. If they wasn't easy, he wouldn't do 'em." Marie Louise gasped: "Abbie! In Heaven's name, you don't imply--" "No, I don't!" snapped Abbie. "I never implied in my life, and don't you go sayin' I did." Abbie was at bay now. She had to defend her man from outside suspicion. Suspicion of her husband is a wife's prerogative Marie Louise was too much absorbed in the general vision of man's potential villainy to follow up the individual clue. She was frightened away from considering Jake as a candidate for such infamy. Her wildest imaginings never put him in association with Nicky Easton. There were so many excursions and alarms in the world of 1917 that the riddle of who tried to sink the ship on dry land joined a myriad others in the riddle limbo. When Marie Louise was well enough to go back to her business school she found riddles enough in trying to decide where this letter or that had got to on the crazy keyboard, or what squirmy shorthand symbol it was that represented this syllable or that. She had lost the little speed she had had, and it was double drudgery regaining the forgotten lore. But she stood the gaff and found herself on the dizzy height of graduation from a lowly business school. She had traveled a long way from the snobbery of her recent years. Davidge recognized her face and her voice when she presented herself before him. But her soul was an utter stranger. She did not invite him to call on her or warn him that she was coming to call on him. She appeared in his anteroom and bribed one of the clerks to go to him with a message: