isn't finding my Marie," said Eveley. "I want her."

"Let's call Lieutenant Ames," said Nolan suddenly. "I rather imagine this
will hit him."

"Oh, poor Jimmy," cried Eveley. "He told me he wanted to marry her."

Far into the night, they puzzled and pondered, not knowing which way to
turn, but all in their love of Marie resolved that she must be found and
saved again from the chaos. The next day, against the advice of all the
others, Eveley sent word to Amos Hiltze and seemed to feel some comfort
in his evident surprise and perturbation.

"I can not understand it," he said. "She was so happy, and loved you so
much. I will look for her. She may have taken fright at something--but
what could it possibly have been?"

"Tell her I do not care what has happened, nor what she fears. She must
come to me and I will help her."

In spite of the insistence of Nolan, Angelo and Jimmy Ames, Eveley would
have given the matter into the hands of the police, trusting to her own
promises and her own standing to save Marie from whatever they held
against her. But at her first suggestion of this to Amos Hiltze, he took
a most positive stand against it.

"If you do that, you have lost her forever. It is the police she fears.
She would never forgive you for putting her into their hands, even if you
could afterward extricate her. You must not dream of such a thing."

So Eveley gave it up and tried to reconcile herself to patient waiting,
and to prayers of faith, determined to believe that the persistent search
going on in all sections of the town would be effective, and believing
still more fervently that God must return to her again the sister she had
learned to love.

This time, because Eveley was suffering no one connected the
disappearance of Marie with Eveley's theory of duty. And to herself
Eveley made no claims, not even for her favorite Exception.

For if Marie had loved her, would she not have left at least one word of
sympathy, and affection, in farewell? Indeed, if she had loved her, would
she not have preferred the investigation of the Secret Service to
separation? For Eveley would have braved every court in the country for
her little foreign sister.

She tried to interest herself in the affairs of her friends, as of old.
She tried to return to her old whimsical routine of living alone in her
Cloud Cote, but from being a little nook of laughter and love, it became
ineffably dreary and dull. And Eveley was suffering not