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Ann said nothing. She thought she knew how much the “laughing over his bad luck” meant. Rodney wasn’t likely to wear his heart on his sleeve.

She refused Mrs. Ford’s invitation to dine with them.

“Thank you so much, but there are business letters I must write for the English mail,” she said. “And I’m up to my eyes in accounts too. It was awfully good of you to take me out today. I enjoyed it tremendously.” That was true of the first part of the day, at any rate.

In her own room she made herself a cup of tea, but she couldn’t eat. The thought of Rodney, and the grief which she knew he was enduring, possessed her mind to the exclusion of every other thought. She tried to write her letters, but she could not concentrate upon them. She must see Rodney! She must! She wanted to tell him that she suffered with him in his sorrow—wanted to bring him what little comfort she could.

It was eight o’clock when she went to the telephone, and rang up the Imperial. No, Mr. Marsh was not staying at the hotel. No, they couldn’t say where she would be likely to find him.

She tried one or two other places without success.

At each failure she grew more and more desperate. The desire to get into touch with Rodney grew stronger and more imsistent. Now the importance of finding him, of speaking to him alone, became an overwhelming obsession.

At last she gained news of him. At the Puawa Hotel they told her that he had been in earlier. They didn’t know if he were still on the premises. They would go and see. While she waited, Ann knew that