She glanced up at him and the blue eyes were dancing.  Miss Alicia Adair knew no joy to compare with that of teasing, and it was not often that the fates gave her such a pliable subject.

“Tell me, Mr. Ford; is—­is she pretty?”

“She is beautiful; the most beautiful woman in the world, Miss Adair.”

“How fine!  And, of course, she is a paragon of all the virtues?—­an angel without the extremely inconvenient wings?”

“You have said it:  and I have never doubted it from the moment I first laid eyes on her.”

“Better and better,” she murmured.  Then:  “She has money?”

“I suppose she has; yes, she certainly has money.  But that doesn’t make any difference—­to her or to me.”

“It is simply idyllic!” was the ecstatic comment.  “After all this there remains but one other possible contingency.  Has she a willing mind, Mr. Ford?”

They had reached the steps of the Nadia, and the others had gone within.  Ford looked soberly into the depths of the laughing eyes and said:  “I would give all my chances of success in this Pacific Southwestern affair to be able to say ‘yes’ to that.”

The station gong was clanging the departure signal for the New York train, and he swung her lightly up to the step of the car.

“Good-by,” she said, turning to smile down upon him.  And then, “I don’t believe you, you know; not the least bit in the world.”

“Why don’t you?” he demanded.

“Because the woman doesn’t live who would be worth such a sacrifice as that would be—­to Mr. Stuart Ford.”

And this was her leave-taking.

X

THE SINEWS OF WAR

The general offices of the C. P. & D. Railway were crowded into a half-dozen utilitarian rooms on the second floor of the company’s freight station building in the Chicago yards.  In two of these rooms, with a window outlook upon a tangle of switching tracks with their shifting panorama of cars and locomotives, Ford set up his standard as chief executive of the three “annexed” roads, becoming, in the eyes of three separate republics of minor officials and employees, the arbiter of destiny.

Naturally, the announcement that their railroads had been swallowed whole by the Pacific Southwestern had fallen as a thunderclap upon the rank and file of the three local companies; and since, in railway practice, a change of owners usually carries with it a sweeping change in department heads, the service was instantly demoralized.

During the first few hours of Ford’s administration, therefore, the wires were buzzing with hasty resignations; and those whose courage was not whetted to the quitting point took a loose hold upon their duties and waited to see what would happen.  Under such chaotic conditions Ford took his seat in the mean little office over the freight station, and flung himself ardently into the task of bringing order out of the sudden confusion.  Effectively to support Adair and the reconstructionists on the board it was critically necessary that there be immediate and cheering news from the front.