for deep lines had seared themselves into
his face, aging it distressingly, and the mouth was drawn as that of a
man who has been called back from the margin of death. But his eyes held
an unwavering fire and his jaw was set in the pattern of battle. Mary
remembered a painting of a solitary and wounded artilleryman leaning
against a shattered field gun amid the bodies of his fallen comrades.
The painter had put sternly into the face an expression of one who
awaits death, but denies defeat. Here, too, was such a face. The man,
hastening out, halted suddenly. Then he stepped back into his own
office, silently motioning her to follow.

"It has come," he told her quietly. "We should have expected it, yet we
were taken by surprise. Today tells a grim story."

"What does it all mean?" she pleaded. She stood close with her face
almost as dead white as the ermine that fell softly about her shoulders.
"I read the papers--and I came at once--to be near you in these hours.
What does it mean?"

"I can't explain now," he answered in the quick utterance of one to whom
time is invaluable. "Now every minute may mean millions--even human
lives and deaths. I told you that he must trample down the innocent and
the ignorant to come within striking distance of me. He is doing it. The
bottom has dropped out of everything--pandemonium reigns. Each minute is
beggaring hundreds--each half-hour is sending old houses to the wall and
shattering public confidence. By this afternoon the country will be in
the lockjaw paralysis of panic--unless we can stem the tide. Will you
wait here for me? I must go to Malone."

"And there is nothing I can do--nothing?" Her voice was agonized and,
with his hand on the knob, he abruptly wheeled and came back. He caught
her fiercely in his arms and held her so smotheringly to his breast that
her breath came in gasps. She clung to him spasmodically and the lips
that met his were hot with a fever of fear and love. "Nothing I can do,"
she whispered, "though I am--the Helen who brought on the war?"

"Yes," he spoke eagerly, passionately, and she could feel the muscles in
his tensed arms play like flexible steel as her hands dropped to rest
inertly upon them. "Yes, there is something you can do--something you
are doing! You are giving me a strength beyond my own strength to fling
myself on these wolves and beat them back. You are giving me a
battle-lust and a hope.... Now I must go."

She released him and forced a