When the heir to a hundred millions of dollars is arrested in this country for any act less than murder, he does not expect to sleep in a cell. The police do not expect him to sleep in a cell, and the public would be astonished—and a little vexed—if he were compelled to do so. They would be vexed because in the event of his detention, they would be deprived of the pleasure of railing against our institutions and of saying to their neighbors in the street-car that, “a man with enough money can get away with anything.”

“Couldn’t you bring in a kid without usin’ the wood?” the lieutenant at the desk said to the officer who had floored Potter. It did not seem fitting to that lieutenant that a hundred millions of dollars should have its scalp abraided by a night stick.

“Kid, hell!” said the officer. “If you’d ’a’ seen the wallop he handed Tom!”

Potter clung to the edge of the desk, dizzy, swaying, his head not clear between blow and drink.

“Here,” said the lieutenant, “come in here and lay down. Want I should telephone anybody—or git a doctor?”

“No,” said Potter, sinking on the lounge and closing his eyes.

The lieutenant went out and called the superintendent on the telephone. “Got young Waite here,” he said. “He tried to tear the Pontchartrain up by the roots and Kerr had to drop the locust on him a bit. What’ll I do wit’ the kid?”

“Hurt?”

“Didn’t improve him none.”

“Drunk?”

“So-so.”

“Send somebody over to the Tuller with him and have him put to bed.”

It was not for the public to know that the superintendent had two sons who were employed in the Waite Motor Car Company’s plant—for whom he desired fair prospects and promotion.

So Potter slept in an excellent hotel bedroom instead of a cell. He awakened in the morning with a head that was very sore; dressed and went down to the office.

“Your car is out front,” said the clerk. Even that detail had been attended to by a solicitous police force.

At breakfast he read a paper on whose first page he divided honors with the Lusitania. He was not interested in what was said about himself; at first he was not especially interested in what was said about the Lusitania, but as he read his interest grew, changing to hot anger as he read the still incomplete list of the dead. More than one individual was there named with whom Potter had broken bread.

Even in the editorial there was no demand for war; there was astonishment, there was wrath, but it seemed to Potter there was some effort to find an excuse for Germany’s act.... Passengers warned.... Munitions.... Possibility of internal explosion.... Wait for particulars. The attitude of the paper was not quite his father’s attitude, not so frank, but he was able to see it was his father’s attitude disguised for popular consumption. And he was intelligent enough to realize that the finger of that paper was on the public pulse; that, without doubt, the paper was dealing with the situation as the public wanted it dealt with—a public not willing to resent blow with blow.

At the next table a man was saying, “Just because they’ve killed a thousand or so is no reason for us to get into it. War would mean killing another hundred thousand or maybe half a million. Because they’ve killed a thousand, should we let them kill a hundred times as many more? That’s sense.... Make ’em pay for it....”

“What could we do, anyhow?” asked the other. “Might get in with our navy, but there isn’t anything for a navy to do. Couldn’t send an army across three thousand miles of ocean.”

“Right. I’m for the Allies, but my idea is we can help a lot more by staying neutral and sending ’em all the munitions they want.”

“My idea exactly,” agreed the other.

That was it. What could we do? We had no army. Potter had been told that Uruguay had more artillery than the United States. There was no ammunition!... The United States was ready for peace, and the old absurdity about a million squirrel-shooters was gospel in the minds of a hundred millions of people. A million squirrel-shooters armed with what?

Potter got up from the table and went out to his car. He wanted to be alone; he wanted fresh air; he wanted to work off the various uncomfortable sensations that possessed him. He drove recklessly out Jefferson Avenue to the Country Club. At this hour it was deserted save for servants. It would do him good, he thought, to play around alone, without even a caddy, so he donned flannels and shoes, and carried his caddy bag to the first tee.

Somebody else was teeing off—a girl. Potter did not glance at her, but dropped his bag with a clatter and sat down on the bench to wait till she should get out of his way.

“How do you do?” said the young woman.

Potter stood up automatically. “Good morning, Miss von Essen,” he said, without interest.

She turned her back on the ball she had been about to address and walked toward him, slender, graceful, yellow hair blowing out from beneath a tilted tam-o’-shanter. Her face was thin, not especially pretty at first glance, but arresting. The features were distinct, and the expression, even in repose, was one of eagerness—such an expression as one associated with the possession of wit and daring. The expression was akin to pertness, but was not pertness. One knew she could play golf or tennis. One knew she had been a tomboy. One knew she had temper. Her whole appearance and bearing were a perpetual challenge. “Come on,” it seemed to say. “Whatever it is, if there’s a chance to take, let’s do it.” Potter knew she was a girl about whom there had been shakings of the head, not so much because of what she had done as because of what she might do. Conservative mothers preferred some other friend for their daughters—and you felt immediately that Hildegarde von Essen delighted to tantalize such matrons and to set their tongues clacking.

“You gave away something yesterday that you needed yourself,” she said, with directness.

“No,” said Potter, amused as at a pert child. She was only nineteen. “What was it?”

“Advice. ‘You’ll be breaking into print good one of these days, and there’ll be the devil to pay,’” she quoted. “‘You’ll get yourself talked about if you don’t ease off some,’ says you to me.” The effect of it was of a naughty child thrusting out her tongue. “And you take your sanctimonious air right away to the Pontchartrain and drink too much and get into a dis-grace-ful fight, and get arrested, and break into print good. I s’pose,” she said, thoughtfully, “you were jealous—afraid I might steal some advertising and crowd you out.”

Potter laughed, a good, whole-hearted, boyish laugh. The sort of laugh one likes to hear. “It was funny, wasn’t it?” he said.

“Impertinent, I call it,” she said, sharply.

He laughed again. “If you want advice on any subject, you go to an expert, don’t you? Well, I’m an expert on breaking into print and getting myself talked about. My advice is worth something. I ought to charge for it.... Now there’s a notion. How would it do for me to open an office with a sign on the door, Expert Advice on Wild-oats Farming—Years of Experience?”

“You seem proud of it.”

“No, I’m not exactly proud of it. I’m not like little girls who do things for effect.”

She turned her back and marched to her ball, but before she was ready for the stroke she faced him again. “You’re just a naughty little boy throwing paper wads in school,” she said, sweetly, “and you think you’re a grown man being devilish.”

“Eh?” he said, a bit startled. On the face of it she had merely uttered a saucy, childish gibe, but Potter was struck by it. He tucked it away in his mind for future reference. There were elements of shrewdness, of insight, of truth in it.

“I have a puppy who chewed up my best slippers—because he hadn’t anything else to do,” she said.

“Do your friends, by any chance, hint that your tongue is sharp?” he asked.

She made no reply, but her driver whistled viciously through the air in a practice stroke.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said, “just to show you I’m forgiving I’ll let you play around with me.”

She looked at him an instant. “I’ll give you a stroke a hole,” she said.

“Eh?”

“I’ve seen you play,” she said, calmly.

“Drive,” he said, with a chuckle. “I ought to put up a cup, oughtn’t I?”

“Make it a ride in that aeroplane thing of yours,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to see how it felt to fly. Not just go up and come down, but a regular fly.”

“Not a chance. Your father would assassinate me.”

“You haven’t much confidence in your game, have you? To beat a girl who gives you a stroke a hole.”

“We’d both break into print. Can’t you see it in type? ‘Hildegarde von Essen explores the firmament with Potter Waite,’ with some account of your career with number of fines for speeding, and references to myself. Not nice.”

“Fiddlesticks! We shouldn’t have to invite any reporters....”

“But they’d hear about it. They always do.”

“A stroke a hole,” she jeered.

“Very well. Give me a beating and I’ll take you flying.” He felt confident enough, for he played a fair game of golf.

His confidence decreased after the first hole was played. He outdrove her and had the distance of her, but her every stroke was down the center of the course; she never overestimated her strength, and avoided trouble. On the green she holed a twelve-foot putt—and the hole was hers.

He settled down to play his best. The thing became not merely a game of golf between a man and a girl. It seemed to him that more was at stake than victory or defeat in a pastime. He became interested, intensely interested. He wanted to win and he played to win.... And he watched the girl. She interested him. She was so utterly natural, so without pose, yet so very different from the ordinary run of girls, particularly nineteen-year-old girls. There was a tang about her. It was as if one were eating bread and all unexpectedly encountered some unidentified, some palate-intriguing spice. That defined her for Potter. If he had been going to describe her he would have said she was highly spiced.

Potter played better than usual, but at the end of the ninth hole he was two down. They had talked little. Now she sat down.

“Tired?” he asked.

“Not the least,” she said, “but I find I play the last nine better if I sit here a few minutes and get the first nine out of my mind.... Had you any friends on the Lusitania?” She asked the question suddenly.

“Yes,” he said.

“If I were a man—”

“If you were a man—?” he repeated after her.

“I’d enlist. I wouldn’t wait for this country to go to war. I’d go across. A good many boys have gone, haven’t they? I’d go across and be an aviator—or anything they’d let me be....”

“For the Allies? I took it for granted you would be on the other side of the fence.”

“Pro-German!” Her eyes flashed. “I leave that for Father and his cronies. I believe they celebrated last night—actually. My mother wasn’t German,” she said. Potter knew Mrs. von Essen had died two years before. “I know Germans,” she said, presently. “I ought to; I’ve lived among them all my life.... Sometimes I think the whole race is a button short.” Potter was to learn that in her vocabulary “a button short” meant not quite complete mentally. “I like some of them, and I’d even trust some of them, but most of them are arrogant beasts.... I’ve read their books,” she said. “Dad has a lot of them. People used to think they were nice, slow, harmless, fat, good-natured. Maybe some of them are. But I believe that’s what the German government wanted the world to think.” These were unusual words to hear falling from a girl’s lips. She had been thinking. Perhaps that had happened in her life which made her think. “Will we declare war?” she asked, in her sudden way.

“Last night I was sure we would. To-day I’m almost as sure we won’t.”

She nodded. “People don’t realize.... But we’ll be in it,” she said. “No matter how much we try to stay out, they’ll force us in. They’ll sink another Lusitania and another and another, until we have to come in. You’ll see.... Partly because they don’t understand—and partly because that’s the kind they are. You know a German never understands anybody but a German. They can’t. Just before Mother died she said to me, ‘Garde’—she always called me Garde—‘don’t marry a German, honey. Nobody but a German woman should marry a German.’ And Mother ought to know, oughtn’t she? I’d rather marry a Chinaman,” she said, suddenly becoming girlish again.

“If we have war, what will all the Germans in this country do?”

“Talk loudly till war is declared. Then shut up and do sneaky things. Nothing in the open.... I think,” she said, slowly, evidently trying to set aside prejudice and cling to fact—“I think most of them will be loyal. In spite of their talk, I don’t believe most of them would care to live in Germany and in German conditions. That’s why. But there’ll be enough.” She got up quickly and teed her ball. “Let’s go on,” she said.

Hildegarde played the same steady game as before; Potter’s mind was on other things. Somehow he believed this girl was right; that she read the future truly. The sinking of the Lusitania meant war—sooner or later it meant war.... And the country was unready for war. It did not want to get ready for war.... She had spoken about going across to fight with the Allies. He considered that. It was a thing he was to consider for days and weeks to come. But that was a makeshift. He realized it was a makeshift. There must be something better, something more logical than that.

He won a hole and halved a hole in the last nine.

“When do we fly?” she asked, eagerly.

“I shouldn’t have promised.”

“But you did.”

He nodded. “Whenever you wish.”

“Let’s see. Suppose we say next Tuesday.”

“My car is here. Can I drive you home?” he said.

“I was to telephone for my car. Yes, you may.”

A limousine was just entering the grounds of the von Essen place in Grossepoint when Potter and Hildegarde reached the drive.

“There’s Father,” she said, and her lips compressed a trifle.

A big man who looked not unlike Bismarck, and who endeavored to heighten the likeness, alighted and stood beside the car, looking toward them. It was obvious he was waiting for them. Potter stopped his car and lifted his cap. Herman von Essen scowled.

“Since when are you friends with this young man?” he demanded. “Out of that car and into the house. Have you no sense—to be seen in public with this man whose picture is in the papers? For a girl to be with him is to lose her reputation.... And you”—he turned on Potter furiously—“take your car out of my grounds. Never speak with my daughter again. Do you hear? You are a drunken young ruffian.” He launched himself into a tirade of great circumstantiality.

Potter’s eyes were dark with the brooding expression which his friends counted a signal of danger, but he remained motionless, save to turn toward Hildegarde.

“I am sorry, Miss von Essen,” he said. “I shouldn’t have brought you. I might have foreseen—”

She smiled. It was not a bright smile, but a reckless smile, as reckless as one of Potter’s own might be.

“Thank you for coming.... I hope we shall be friends.” She did not glance at her father, but walked erectly up the steps and disappeared in the house. Von Essen continued verbally to chastise Potter, who did not look at him. Perhaps he did not dare, fearing the weakness of his self-restraint. The young man threw his car into gear and moved away, leaving von Essen gesticulating behind him.

He drove to his own house, a mile beyond. Before he reached there the brooding darkness was gone from his eyes; they twinkled. He was thinking of Hildegarde.