Sometimes the man would see a vagrant shadow of foreboding steal into the mismated eyes, but when Mary became aware of its recognition in his own, it was always swiftly banished for one of serene happiness and confidence.

“Dearest,” he told her at such a moment—­it was the moment of candle-lighting, when dusk brings shadows of fear, “why ’heed the rumble of the distant drum’?  We love each other, and when my fight is over no one shall part us.”

And she in the circle of his arms looked up and laughed and they both banished from their hearts all thought of Hamilton Burton.

At her mother’s house before she came away, Mary had talked to Paul, and had won his weak promise that he would permit his brother to take no dishonorable step toward freeing Loraine Haswell.  So she had not kept her threat of warning the husband, and after she had returned to town, her mother fell ill, and in the first call of loyalty there Mary remained with her.  About this time she read that Loraine had gone to Europe, and had gone alone.

Days had passed into weeks and Hamilton Burton had struck no blow.  Mary had begun to believe that he meant to strike none, and her lover encouraged that view, but he himself knew that it was a phantom hope.  He knew that the arch master of financial strategy was building and strengthening every sinew of war, and that the crushing impact of his attack would be only the more terrific because he had curbed his impatience and held his hand until the exact fraction of the psychological moment.

CHAPTER XX

Len Haswell carried a stricken face about the clubs where once he had been the center of jovial gatherings, when he appeared there—­which was not often.  Old associates who read the signs avoided him out of kindliness save those who like Thayre could be with him without reminding him of his hurt.  Thayre, with all his seeming of bluff and noisy gaiety, had an underlying tenderness of heart and delicacy of perception which made him a friend for troubled hours.  He knew how to remain silent as well as how to be loquacious and he could radiate an unspoken sympathy.

One evening the Englishman chanced on Haswell in the otherwise deserted reading-room of the National Union Club.  Because it was a club chiefly dedicated to the elder generation Thayre came infrequently and it surprised him to find the other there.  The big man was sitting with an unread paper on his knee and his eyes were brooding as he gazed out through the Fifth-avenue window on the twilight tide of motors and ’buses and hansoms that passed in an endless and unresting flow.

“I had the idea, Haswell,” remarked Thayre as he plumped himself down on the leather arm of the other’s chair and grinned his greeting, “that you came to this place once a year—­when they held the annual meeting.”

“And you?” countered Len in a dull voice.  “I didn’t regard you as an habitue either.”