te fingers, often now
interlinked, seemed tremulously instinct with the exquisite tension
hushing body and soul in breathless accord as they waited in unison.

* * * * *

Toward the end of March the special service battleship squadron of the
North Atlantic fleet commenced testing Chaosite in the vicinity of the
Southern rendezvous. Both main and secondary batteries were employed.
Selwyn had been aboard the flag-ship for nearly a month.

In April the armoured ships left the Southern drill ground and began to
move northward. A destroyer took Selwyn across to the great fortress
inside the Virginia Capes and left him there. During his stay there was
almost constant firing; later he continued northward as far as
Washington; but it was not until June that he telegraphed Austin:

"Government satisfied. Appropriation certain next session. Am on my
way to New York."

Austin, in his house, which was now dismantled for the summer,
telephoned Nina at Silverside that he had been detained and might not be
able to grace the festivities which were to consist of a neighbourhood
dinner to the younger set in honour of Mrs. Gerald. But he said nothing
about Selwyn, and Nina did not suspect that her brother's arrival in
New York had anything to do with Austin's detention.

There was in Austin a curious substreak of sentiment which seldom came
to the surface except where his immediate family was involved. In his
dealings with others he avoided it; even with Gerald and Eileen there
had been little of this sentiment apparent. But where Selwyn was
concerned, from the very first days of their friendship, he had always
felt in his heart very close to the man whose sister he had married, and
was always almost automatically on his guard to avoid any expression of
that affection. Once he had done so, or attempted to, when Selwyn first
arrived from the Philippines, and it made them both uncomfortable to the
verge of profanity, but remained as a shy source of solace to them both.

And now as Selwyn came leisurely up the front steps, Austin, awaiting
him feverishly, hastened to smooth the florid jocose mask over his
features, and walked into the room, big hand extended, large bantering
voice undisturbed by the tremor of a welcome which filled his heart and
came near filling his eyes:

"So you've stuck the poor old Government at last, have you? Took 'em all
in--forts, fleet, and the marine cavalry?"

"S