"Well, why not? Do her good. Put the fear of God into her, perhaps. And she can't spoil a game that 's over and ended."

Taylor laid down his cigar.

"The Gull Island game," he said in his guarded voice, "is n't over and ended."

Napier turned sharply and stood waiting.

"We 've got one of our best men there this minute, playing Carl Pforzheim." Taylor nodded in the face of Napier's stark astonishment. "Your friend Singleton. He's managed the Gull Island job from the beginning. Went up again the day after you were there. Wirelessed the German agent at Amsterdam that he 'd had wind of a raid on the island. He was going to destroy every trace and get out. Singleton saw to it that the truth of that much was verified, and duly reported to the Wilhelmstrasse. He promised them-still, of course, in the character of Pforzheim-to get back to the island as soon as it was safe. Well, he has got back."

"What the devil could he tell of any use to Germany that was n't fatal to us?" Napier demanded.

"You don't yet appreciate the situation," Taylor said softly. "It's a post of special advantage just because the man in charge can choose his own time to be there. He can give important information that reaches Germany the merest trifle too late, or information that he knows they 've had already from another quarter. They're fond of verifying their intelligence. And he tells them things they want to believe and can't check-things they have to take his word for, things that will throw dust in the eyes they count on seeing clearest. I tell you, Gull Island is one of the cogs in the wheel of the British machine. You won't mind if I 'm frank? Well, then, you'd have hard work to commit any indiscretion"— Taylor rubbed it in "that would serve Schwarzenberg's ends so well as to enable her to warn the Germans that a British decoy was nesting in Carl Pforzheim's place."

As he stood there, a prey to increasing uneasiness, Napier had his further

glimpse of one of the disintegrating effects of wartime. The unknown quantity in character. How that had

been forced home! Taylor had seemed "one of the best." No one in the British service was more trusted, and, Napier's instinct told him, no one more justly. None the less, Napier did n't see headquarters writing "all this" from the other side.

"I suppose," he found himself saying, "I ought n't to ask you how you heard about the decoy duck on the island?"

"Well"-Taylor reflected an instant, -"after all, my instructions—yes, I'll tell you. I have it on the best possible authority. Ernst Pforzheim told me."

"Ernst! Ernst Pforzheim is in an English prison, or, rather, he was be fore-"

"Exactly. Before he became of such use to our side. Clever dog as that fellow Singleton is, he could n't have worked the Gull Island oracle without Ernst Pforzheim's help."

Ernst had helped Singleton! No! no! there were limits. It was, anyway, safe to say, "You must in that case rather deplore his death."

"What makes you think he 's dead?" Taylor asked.

"His particular friend, Miss von Schwarzenberg, had the news yester

day."

"She had, had she? Ha ha! The canny Ernst!" Taylor subdued his mirth to say: “Just so. Wilhelmstrasse does n't have the news. We're all right; and Master Ernst can go on drawing pay from two governments. Oh, he's a very practical person, Ernst. The situation is his own invention. piece of 'war economy,' he called it. 'You English hard up for ammunition. Why waste it shooting a spy when he can give you more valuable information than anybody in the German Secret Service?'"

A

"You can't seriously mean we were such fools as to trust a man like that?”

"So far from trusting him, we keep him under surveillance every hour of his life. Two of our men specially detailed."

"You are n't telling me he 's over

here!"

"Been here six weeks."

"Then he 's a free man!" Taylor smiled.

"A man who 's been doing the sort of business Ernst has is never a free man. Nobody knows better than Ernst how little his life would be worth if he took

any liberties. And why should he? This is his harvest-time. He knows he 'll get more out of us than-"

"Than out of Germany?"

"Rather! They 'd ask very awkward questions of Ernst in Germany; he can evade them here. But there's a day of reckoning waiting for Mr. Ernst in the fatherland. No one knows better than he that he 's safer with us, looked after by two capital fellows, till after the war. Then off to South America with a fat bank-account. And, by Jove! he 'll have earned it! The cheek of the devil! Except for one enterprise!" and Mr. Taylor chuckled as he relit his cigar.

"We'd been wondering," he went on, "Macray and I, why the beggar had grown so content never to go out. No more music, no theater, no smart restaurants, and so far as we could see, no reason on earth why, with one or other of the men who stick to him day and night, he should n't revisit his old haunts. Not he!" Again that pleased chuckle. "Not so long as Greta von Schwarzenberg is circulating about New York!"

"Why, he and she are, or they were, thick as thieves."

amounted to a kind of privacy. Instead of relinquishing his hand, she had clutched it tighter:

"You are not going back to England?"

"What's the use of my staying here?"

"The use?" She let go his hand. Napier received the impression that the lowering of her tone was less attributable to two or three other absorbed groups seated about the great room, less to that fact than to some sudden rush of feeling that clouded her voice. “You are safe here."

He looked at her for a moment. Deliberately he shook off the impression her tone more than her words had made.

"No," he shook his head,-"I 'm far from safe where you can ring me up." "You don't like me to ring you up?" He could have laughed if he 'd been less oppressed.

"It 's no use. I see I can't do anything to protect you. I might as well be on the other side of the world."

"No! no!" she protested with an eagerness that caught her breath. "Besides, you are very far from sure of getting to the other side of the world as things are."

His look of angry scorn for the contingency implied agitated her.

"Oh, do believe me! This is a thing I know more about than you do."

"It is n't a knowledge you should have," he said sternly.

She swept the rebuke aside in her alarm.

"Don't imagine," she said in that strained undertone "don't imagine the warnings in the papers are n't serious. It is one of the things I could n't write. Why did n't you come and see me and my mother last Thursday?"

He was aware of being as little able now, face to face, as he had been that night, to paraphrase his reasons for feeling, after Taylor had bared all use of the Gull Island evidence that it was n't humanly possible to go and make idle conversation with Nan and her mother. He dropped out mumbled phrases, "Unexpected business," having "to go to Washington," and was there anything else she had n't been able to write?

Yes, yes. There was a great deal more, more than she had any right to say. But this much she must tell him: "You are n't to ask me how I know, and you won't ask me to tell you more than I've a right to. I have a right!" She flashed an instant's defiance at some un

seen opponent. "Or I'll take it, any

how.

The torpedoing is going to be extended. Yes," she said as though to convince her own shrinking incredulity as much as his. "Neutral as well as enemy ships. They 're going on till England is as isolated as she 's isolated Germany. If England won't believe that, if England does n't realize,"-she waited an instant as if to give him time to throw out a life-line of hope to her proviso, "then," she said as she took in Napier's motionless figure and stern face "then what 's before is too horrible."

"I am glad you recognize the horror of the German policy."

"What good will that do?" she began hurriedly; and then half to herself: "But you simply must n't! You did n't know, perhaps," she leaned nearer, "passenger-boats have been carrying

guns."

"Really?" said Napier.

She nodded.

"It's true. And that's why the Germans say they will sink passengerboats. So they can't be used any more by travelers, now that they 're warned."

"You see it as simple as that? Germany is to tell neutrals they are not to travel even in neutral waters!"

"If we don't use passenger-boats for passenger-boats, they are n't passengerboats any more." (Napier heard Schwarzenberg speaking.) "They go loaded to the guards! Yes, war material for the Allies."

"If that is so, why is it? Would you see the Allies punished, enslaved, because the Allies have n't, as Germany has, devoted the last forty years to making and accumulating arms? Germany-"

"Oh, it's America I 'm thinking of— after you!" she threw in. "If America's part is going to be just to grow richer and richer out of this awfulness, I don't know how I shall bear it. that 's what I'm telling Julian.

And

But

"It 's no use," said Napier.
"Nothing I could say or do?"
He shook his head.

"Very well, then," she said with hurt mouth that quivered, "what is the name of the boat?"

He considered a moment. "Don't you think it would be very indiscreet of me to tell you?"

"It will be the discreetest thing you ever did in your life."

"Why do you want to know?"

"I want to know because"—again she bent to him-"because there 's a blacklist." He saw her eyes bright with terror. "You must give me time to find out."

"I see," he interrupted. "You would like me to owe my life to Greta von Schwarzenberg."

"To me, Gavan," the pallor of her face yielded to a sudden flush,-"if you I could bear that."

"I have n't decided on my boat," he said. "But I thought you came to say goodby?"

He was going on a few weeks' tour on this side, he said.

"Whereabouts are you going to tour?" When she had waited for the answer that did n't come she said: "You 're afraid I'll tell. Everybody's afraid every one else will tell. Everybody's changed."

"Not Miss Greta, surely?"

"Greta as much as anybody," she flung out. And then, as though she regretted that ebullition, she added hastily: "I suppose I must n't ask youwhat next, after the few weeks' tour."

"Yes, you may ask that," Napier said, the smile going out of his eyes. "France next."

They parted with no hint from him of the fact that one result of his second visit to Washington had been an extension of the highly successful unofficial mission.

He returned to New York early in May, to find the country in a state of excitement such as the United States had not known since the assassination of Lincoln. Some twenty-four hours

before, the Germans had torpedoed the Lusitania. Fifteen hundred lives had been sacrificed. The effect on Napier was the effect on many. The Lusitania dead recruited thousands.

On the afternoon of the day of his arrival in New York, Napier returned to his hotel, having engaged passage to England by the next ship.

A lady, he was told, waited to see him. He kept telling himself that he knew it would be Nan he should find waiting; but he was not in the least prepared for the Nan he found, nor for that low exclamation: "At last! At last!" nor for the shaken voice in which she disposed of his question how had she known.

"An arrangement with the clerk," she said, to ring her up as soon— "And that was before!"

A

"Yes, before the awful news." shuddering vagueness seemed to close about her like a mist. It shut out the moment's shining at his coming. He could see that blank horror at the tragedy obscured for the moment everything else in life.

Only Napier, it seemed, felt the added strain of this coming and going of excited people, the bringing in of telegrams, the dictating of others. The girl paid no more attention to the other people scattered about the great room, to their tension or their tears, than they to hers. As she turned to throw her trembling body down in a chair by the window, her wild looks startled Napier.

"And did you see what the papers said?"

The terrible newspaper accounts, which he had not yet found time to read, she had by heart. Behind that veil of nervous vagueness he caught glimpses of the intensity of her realization-her participation, one might say -in the scenes off the Irish coast.

"Had you any special friend on board?" he asked.

"Special fr-" she repeated in that low voice. And then her note climbed quickly to what for her was the climax of that huge disaster. "They were Americans!" So she confessed that limitation which faulty imagination set to our humanity-a limitation she had imagined she despised. "Americans

they were, and innocent. I keep thinking most of the children. There were such lots of children, Gavan, on that boat. I kept seeing them all night long. I could hear their voices growing weaker-" her own failed her for a moment. And when she found it again, it was a different voice altogether, firm and bitter. "People say to me, 'the Lusitania was warned not to sail.'"

Yes, Napier had heard that was so. "As if that could excuse! It 's what Greta says. "They were warned,' she keeps repeating. "They disobeyed the warning.' The little children, the babies disobeyed the German warning! Oh-h!" The small tightened fist beat upon one knee to call back the self-control that threatened to desert her. "I've had a horrible morning with Greta. She something has died in Greta. I'd been feeling ever since " Again she broke off and seemed to seize upon comparative commonplace to steady her nerves. "It was true about her being married. She admitted it the day she read of Mr. Guedalla's death in the paper. She got some money-it was n't her not telling us she was married; it was other things. Oh, I've been unhappy enough! But this this! Gavan, I could n't get her to say it was horrible. She was n't even sorry. Oh, Gavan, she was glad!" Her locked fingers writhed in her lap. She seemed not to know that she was crying. "What do you think she said at last? 'It would be a lesson,' she said. A lesson! To torture and kill fifteen hundred innocent people. A lesson to the children! To little babies!" She turned her quivering face away a moment. "I think," she said under her broken breath-"I think I should have gone mad if you had n't come back. Oh, I'm so glad you 're back!"

He simply had n't the courage to tell her at that moment he was going to sail for England the following day. He told her in a very gentle little note sent late in the afternoon. They were, to dine together.

She met him with steady looks. "I've cabled to Julian," she said immediately, "that I'm coming back with you."

The Parnassian was to sail at ten. Napier had stood outside the entrance to the dock, waiting for Nan, since ten minutes past nine. At twenty minutes to ten there she was at last.

"But where is your luggage?" he called out. He had warned her not to trust it to other hands. In that second before the cab drew alongside something in the face at the window prepared him for the answer.

"That's why I am late. I had to have everything taken off. And I tried to telephone you. Just as I was leaving this." She held a paper toward him as she got out of the cab. She stood there while he read:

I depend on your waiting till I come sailing to-day Olympic.

JULIAN.

As Napier looked up, speechless in that first moment, she said:

"Serves me right," in an odd, strained voice. "As Greta said, I was running away." She put out her hand and steadied herself against the window-frame of the cab. "Where you 're going they shoot deserters, don't they? Well, I 've been shot. Oh, not fatally! just in the leg. Enough to stop me." "You'll wait for Julian?" Napier

said.

"What else is possible?" She hung her head. "They 've depended on me. But when he comes,"-her breast heaved as she brought it out,—“I shall tell him."

"Tell Julian! What shall you tell Julian?"

The lifted eyes were swimming. "That it 's you. That to see you go without me breaks my heart."

"Nan!" he cried, and took her by the He walked her a little way from the entrance.

arm.

"I think," he went on gravely, "I would n't tell Julian. You see, Nan, you 've got to consider that I may n't be coming back." He hurried on. He did n't look at her. "What 's the use of telling Julian? Is n't there enough misery in the world without adding to it?"

she said, blurring her words. "Enough misery in the world without war. You never cared about that old misery as Julian did. And that 's what makes it so-so-not to be borne that you should feel you have to go and meet the new horror out there."

"Well, I do feel like that," he said.

"And yet it is n't any longer just duty. You want to go!" she cried. "I saw that yesterday when we talked about the Lusitania."

"Yes," he said grimly, "I want to go." "Well, so do lots of my countrymen." And Napier could n't have told whether dismay or pride was dominant in the new note. His hand slipped down her arm and found her fingers as they turned back. Napier's valet, Day, came running out of the dock-gates. He looked distractedly across the wide, open space before the slips.

"Yes!" Napier hailed him. "I'll be there!" He gripped her hand hard before he let it go. "Don't come to see me on board. I'll have to run for it. Good-by." On an impulse, whether mere instinct to cover his emotion or some obscurer working of the mind behind his wretchedness, he caught Julian's cable out of her hand. He held the paper in front of his misty eyes as he hurried toward the dock entrance. The hour the message had been sent from London struck him now for the first time. He halted suddenly. In a voice harsh with the effort to keep it steady he called back:

"Did Greta know that you meant to go with me?"

"Yes," came the panting answer as she ran forward a few steps. "I told her before I saw you that I could n't bear it over here any longer. And now you-you are leaving me!" She stopped.

"You'll lose the boat, sir!" Day called

out.

"That's what Julian and I think,"