“I beg your pardon, but aren’t you Mr. T.A.  Buck?”

“Yes.”

“How do you do!  I’m Mrs. Buck.”

Then they had giggled together, deliciously, and he had put a firm hand on the smartly tailored blue serge sleeve.

“I thought so.  That being the case, you’re coming home along o’ me, young ’ooman.”

“Can’t do it.  I’m on my way to the Ritz to meet a dashing delegation from Serbia.  You never saw such gorgeous creatures.  All gold and green and red, with swords, and snake-work, and glittering boots.  They’d make a musical-comedy soldier look like an undertaker.”

There came a queer little look into his eyes.  “But this isn’t a musical comedy, dear.  These men are—­Look here, Emma.  I want to talk to you.  Let’s walk home together and have dinner decently in our own dining room.  There are things at the office—­”

“S’impossible, Mr. Buck.  I’m late now.  And you know perfectly well there are two vice-commandants ready to snatch my shoulder-straps.”

“Emma!  Emma!”

At his tone the smiling animation of her face was dimmed.  “What’s gone wrong?”

“Nothing.  Everything.  At least, nothing that I can discuss with you at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-fifth Street.  When does this Serbian thing end?  I’ll call for you.”

“There’s no telling.  Anyway, the Fannings will drive me home, thanks, dear.”

He looked down at her.  She was unbelievably girlish and distingue in the blue uniform; a straight, slim figure, topped by an impudent cocked hat.  The flannel shirt of workaday service was replaced to-day by a severely smart affair of white silk, high-collared, stitched, expensively simple.  And yet he frowned as he looked.

“Fisk got his exemption papers to-day.”  With apparent irrelevance.

“Yes?” She was glancing sharply up and down the thronged street.  “Better call me a cab, dear.  I’m awfully late.  Oh, well, with his wife practically an invalid, and all the expense of the baby’s illness, and the funeral—­The Ritz, dear.  And tell him to hurry.”  She stepped into the cab, a little nervous frown between her eyes.

But Buck, standing at the curb, seemed bent on delaying her.  “Fisk told me the doctor said all she needs is a couple of months at a sanitarium, where she can be bathed and massaged and fed with milk.  And if Fisk could go to a camp now he’d have a commission in no time.  He’s had training, you know.  He spent his vacation last summer at Plattsburg.”

“But he’s due on his advance spring trip in two or three weeks, isn’t he?...  I really must hurry, T.A.”

“Ritz,” said Buck, shortly, to the chauffeur.  “And hurry.”  He turned away abruptly, without a backward glance.  Emma’s head jerked over her shoulder in surprise.  But he did not turn.  The tall figure disappeared.  Emma’s taxi crept into the stream.  But uppermost in her mind was not the thought of Serbians, uniforms, Fisk, or Ritz, but of her husband’s right hand, which, as he turned away from the cab, had been folded tight into a fist.