erecting--but even then it would be no good if the Germans could
come along and say their bridge looked handsomer than ours. It was a
job that would take a good man eight months, and I had to get it done
in four. There are just twelve hours in a day, it's true--but then
there are twelve more hours in the night. Fever? Well, yes. And
sunstroke--yes, both men and beasts went down with that. Maps got washed
out by the rain. I lost my best assistant by snakebite. But such things
didn't count as hindrances, they couldn't be allowed to delay the work.
If I lost a man, it simply meant so much more work for me. After a
couple of months a blacksmith's hammer started thumping in the back
of my head, and when I closed my eyes for a couple of hours at night,
little fiery snakes went wriggling about in my brain. Tired out? When
I looked in the glass, my eyes were just two red balls in my head. But
when the four months were up, I was back in the Chief's office."

"And--and Ferdinand Holm?"

"Had got in the day before."

Merle shifted a little in her seat. "And so--he won?"

Peer lit another cigarette. "No," he said--the cigarette seemed to draw
rather badly--"I won. And that's how I came to be building railways in
Abyssinia."

"Here's the champagne," said Merle. And as the wine foamed in the
glasses, she rose and drank to him. She said nothing, only looked at him
with eyes half veiled, and smiled. But a wave of fire went through him
from head to foot.

"I feel like playing to-night," she said.

It was rarely that she played, though he had often begged her to. Since
they had been married she had seemed loth to touch her violin, feeling
perhaps some vague fear that it would disturb her peace and awaken old
longings.

Peer sat on the sofa, leaning forward with his head in his hands,
listening. And there she stood, at the music-stand, in her red dress,
flushed and warm, and shining in the yellow lamplight, playing.

Then suddenly the thought of her mother came to her, and she went to the
telephone. "Mother--are you there, mother? Oh, we've had such a glorious
day." And the girl ran on, as if trying to light up her mother's heart
with some rays of the happiness her own happy day had brought her.

A little later Peer lay in bed, while Merle flitted about the room,
lingering over her toilet.

He watched her as she stood in her long white gown before the
toilet-table with the little green-shaded lamps, doing her hair for the
ni