Mamise's heart was suddenly a live coal, throbbing with fire and keenly painful--yet very warm. She had a man who loved her well enough to hate for her and to avenge her. That was something gained. Davidge brooded. It was inconceivably hideous that he should have given his heart to this pretty thing at his side only to have her ensconce herself in the arms of another man and give him the liberty of her cheeks--Heaven knew, hell knew, what other liberties. He vowed that he would never put his lips where another man's had been. Mamise seemed to feel soiled and fit only for the waste-basket of life. She had delivered her "message to Garcia," and Garcia rewarded her with disgust. She waited shame-fast for a moment before she could even falter: "Did you happen to hear the news I brought you? Or doesn't it interest you?" Davidge answered with repugnance: "Agh!" In her meekness she needed some insult to revive her, and this sufficed. She flared instantly: "I'm sorry I told you. I hope that Nicky blows up your whole damned shipyard and you with it; and I'd like to help him!" Nothing less insane could have served the brilliant effect of that outburst. It cleared the sultry air like a crackling thunderbolt. A gentle rain followed down her cheeks, while the overcharged heart of Davidge roared with Jovian laughter. There is no cure for these desperate situations like such an explosion. It burns up at once the litter of circumstance and leaves hardly an ash. It fuses elements that otherwise resist welding, and it annihilates all minor fears in one great terror that ends in a joyous relief. Mamise was having a noble cry now, and Davidge was sobbing with laughter--the two forms of recreation most congenial to their respective sexes. Davidge caught her hands and cooed with such noise that the driver outside must have heard the reverberations through the glass: "You blessed child! I'm a low-lived brute, and you're an angel." A man loves to call himself a brute, and a woman loves to be called an angel, especially when it is untrue in both cases. The sky of their being thus cleansed with rain and thunder, and all blue peace again, they were calm enough by and by to consider the main business of the session--what was to be done to save the shipyard from destruction? Mamise had to repeat most of what she had told, point by point: Nicky was not going to wait till the ships were launched or even finished. He was impatient to strike a resounding blow at the American program. Nicky was going to let Mamise know just when the blow was to be struck, so that she might share in the glory of it when triumphant Germany rewarded her faithful servants in America. Jake Nuddle was to take part in the ship-slaughter for the double privilege of protesting against this capitalistic war and of crippling those cruel capitalists to whom he owed all his poverty--to hear him tell it. When Mamise had finished this inventory of the situation Davidge pondered aloud: