Tom Watts and O'Mera sat at table with Potter one evening. "Potter," said Tom, "I'm beginning to think there's something to this rigmarole you've been talking. This deal at the Mexican border has shown us up bad.... Something's got to be done.... It got my goat, by Jove! that's what it did. And I'll tell you what I'm going to do--I'm going to Plattsburg this summer." Potter made no reply. "It's fierce, the state we're in," Tom went on. "Why, what the devil would happen if some regular nation landed an army on the coast--say a couple of hundred thousand men? By the time we got ready to fight the war'd be over with and we'd be cleaned up plenty." "You make me tired," O'Mera said. "Potter with his aeroplanes, and now you with your Plattsburg." He looked up and nodded across the room to Cantor. "Your snappy little friend is running around a lot with that man Cantor," he said to Potter. "Who do you mean?" "The von Essen girl.... She wants to go easy with that boy--he plays marbles for keeps.... Rides with him, dances with him, eats with him. None of my damn business." "It isn't," said Potter, sharply. O'Mera failed to notice, but launched into anecdotes of Cantor's adventures with various women, each adventure cited to demonstrate a certain cold-bloodedness in the dealings of the man with the other sex--and a degree of success with the other sex which Potter had not suspected. "It's his principal occupation," O'Mera said; "he has some other one, I guess, but I'm darned if I've ever figured it out. Handles money careless, too. Must clean up somehow." Cantor merely appeared in the door of the main dining-room, and, after looking around, stepped back into the corridor. Watts drew back his chair. "Let's go down and knock the balls around awhile," he suggested. "Got a date," said O'Mera. "Come on, Potter.... I want to talk to you a bit." Potter nodded and got to his feet. They walked between the tables to the door and out into the handsome hallway. Coming toward them from the elevator they saw Cantor and a girl; he had evidently been waiting for her to come up from the ladies' quarters below. It was Hildegarde von Essen. Potter stiffened, but did not pause. It was the first time he had seen her since she struck him across the face and flung herself into the house the night her flight was turned into a fiasco. She was unchanged; she was the same slender, daring, challenging, keen creature as before. Something she was saying compelled a laugh from Cantor. Then he saw Potter and smiled with surprise.