PIDGE heard about the assassinations in Bosnia as wearily as of a murder in little Sicily. She heard rumors of war in Europe with ennui--how could there be energy enough left in the human race to make war? She met Nagar in the lower hall at Harrow Street on the evening that war became a fact. He looked like a dead man walking in the twilight. She didn’t see Miss Claes at all that night. The next day in the office war began to show its personal aspects to Pidge Musser of Los Angeles. John Higgins was hours late in returning from lunch. She saw that he wouldn’t be down at all to-morrow. He looked old. He had on a black frock coat, as if dressed for pallbearing, though his face looked as if he were about to be borne himself. The little office was fumy, sweetish. “Our blessed Savior moves in mysterious ways,” he remarked. Pidge lingered at the door to get any significance that this might have for her. “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away,” he added, sitting back straight in his chair. He removed his spectacles and reached for the flare of his tie to polish them off, but no tie dangled to-day. It was a little black store-made bow, fastened with a clip over the collar button. Pidge still lingered, her hand on the knob. “Blessed be the name of the Lord,” said John Higgins, “but it’s hell on us.” She started out, but was called back. “I need an audience, Miss Musser. I need a female ear. I need ladylike sympathy. It isn’t sweet of you to run off.” “What’s the matter?” The editor looked at her, squinted, put on his spectacles and looked again. “Do you mean to say you don’t know what’s the matter?” “Everything is the matter,” said Pidge. “But what’s new?” His hand nearest her lifted and rested upon a pile of page proof on his desk. “Dicky Cobden hasn’t written a line from the Kong that we can publish. We’ve cabled him to come in, though he’s probably started. You’ll recall that Belgium lies between France and Germany. She’s holding the Germans off from Paris, giving France and England a chance to get set. Belgium’s the world’s public square right now, the one vortexical spot on the face of the earth. Doesn’t it occur to you that even a new angle on her sins in the heart of Africa is about as much in time and place right now, as Paul Revere’s ride?” ... Three weeks later, she heard that Richard Cobden was in town; that John Higgins had seen him the night before. All that day at the office she kept listening for his step and voice, but he didn’t come. His car was in front of the Harrow Street house, however, when she reached there, and a light showed between the doors from his “parlor.” She lost some of the sense of suffocation when she saw that, a curious gladness for a moment. She tapped the door with her finger tip, pulled the curtain aside ever so little and said: “Hello.” A quick step in the inner room; then he was before her in the doorway, drawing her in under the light. “Pidge--Pidge,” he repeated.