. I hadn't heard," he said, slowly. "Is it--was it
generally known?"

Had Natalie known, and kept it from him?

"I think not. Delight saw her and spoke to her, I believe."

"And you have no idea where she is now."

"None whatever."

He learned that night that Natalie had known, and he surprised a little
uneasiness in her face.

"I--heard about it," she said. "I can't imagine her making a speech.
She's not a bit oratorical."

"We might have sent out one of the cars for her, if I'd known."

"Oh, she was looked after well enough."

"Looked after?"

Natalie had made an error, and knew it.

"I heard that a young clergyman was taking her round," she said, and
changed the subject. But he knew that she was either lying or keeping
something from him. In those days of tension he found her half-truths
more irritating than her rather childish falsehoods. In spite of
himself, however, the thought of the young clergyman rankled.

That night, stretched in the low chair in his dressing-room, under the
reading light, he thought over things carefully. If he loved her as he
thought he did, he ought to want her to be happy. Things between them
were hopeless and wretched. If this clergyman, or Sloane, or any other
man loved her, and he groaned as he thought how lovable she was, then
why not want for her such happiness as she could find?

He slept badly that night, and for some reason Audrey wove herself into
his dreams of the new plant. The roar of the machinery took on the soft
huskiness of her voice, the deeper note he watched for and loved.

CHAPTER XLI

Anna Klein stood in her small room and covered her mouth with her
hands, lest she shriek aloud. She knew quite well that the bomb in the
suit-case would not suffice to blow up the whole great plant. But she
knew what the result of its explosion would be.

The shells were not loaded at the Spencer plant. They were shipped away
for that. But the fuses were loaded there, and in the small brick house
at the end of the fuse building there were stored masses of explosive,
enough to destroy a town. It was there, of course, that Herman was to
place the bomb. She knew how he would do it, carefully, methodically,
and with what a lumbering awkward gait he would make his escape.

Her whole mind was bent on giving the alarm. On escaping, first, and
then on arousing the plant. But when the voices below continued, long
after Herman had gone, she was entirely desperate. Herman