ian abandon his efforts to remove the obstacles, and Nan would be spared what could 'nt fail to be a horrible shock. His aching tenderness for the girl asked why she should ever know the truth unless, indeed, Greta von Schwarzenberg should succeed in carrying off the goose that laid the golden eggs. By all the gods, he must prevent that!

Eagerly she had watched him writing, and now she gave her own interpretation to the card Napier despatched up-stairs.

"It is kind of you to come and see if you can help us; but you ought n't to have kept me! Send for a taxi, will you?" she called to the passing page. "Julian 's promised not to leave poor Greta alone till I get back."

Taxis were beginning to grow scarce in London. Napier had followed her to the door; they could see the page-boy pursuing a cab.

"Nan-" She began to speak in a nervous, forestalling haste.

"You 've never understood about Greta. I believe it's people of strong natures that suffer the most. Last night she could n't sleep!"

"How do you know?"

"I watched the crack of light under her door. Twice I knocked and tried to make her let me come in. She would n't. 'Go to sleep,' she said. As if I could! Once she unbolted the door and came on tiptoe into my room. What do you think for? To get a needle out of my case. Greta sewing! And what do you think she had found to sew? She would n't tell me, but I saw this morning. She had been trying to put herself to sleep by changing the buttons on that very buttony ulster of hers. Took off all the round, bumpy ones and put on a flat kind instead. I can't see it's any improvement. But, then, I always hate buttons that don't button anything, except when they 're on cute little pageboys."

The cab had rushed up to the door with Buttons on the footboard. Another of the button brotherhood stood by Napier's side.

"Will you please, sir, come up to seventy-two?"

He heard Julian's high voice even before the door was opened.

"All that does n't matter a straw," he was shouting impatiently into the receiver. "Those regulations, you know as well as I do, can be set aside for the special case. I know she 'll have to have a passport. You 've got to tell the fella at the American embassy. What? Look here, Tommy, you don't understand. I'll be round before you go to luncheon."

Napier had made his way among cardboard boxes and clothes-encumbered chairs to the sofa where Miss Greta half sat, half lay, in a becoming mauve tea-gown. She gave him her hand.

"Hello!" said Julian, already looking up a new telephone number.

Madge came out of the adjoining bedroom, dragging an enormous brown-paper parcel along the floor. "Did you know Nan had got you the sealskin coat? How do, Mr. Gavan? It's a love of a coat. You'll wear it, won't you?"

"No, pack it," said Miss Greta, indifferently.

"But on the boat, Miss Greta. You'll want some warm-'

"I've got a coat," she said impatiently. "Take that thing back where you found it."

"I say,"-Julian jumped up to lend a hand, "I did n't know you 'd come back, Madge. I might as well go now and see about the passport. What 's this?"

"Can't imagine. That's why I brought it in." Between Madge and her unskilful assistant the cord round the great bundle, already loose, came off. The contents bulged. Julian picked the unwieldy thing up in his arms, and a fold of heavy fur oozed out. And then the whole thing had half slithered out of Julian's hold and fell along the floor.

"Lawks!" remarked Madge, with wide eyes on the superb black-fox rug, beaverlined.

"Too heavy for anything but a Russian sledge," Julian objected.

"Well, will you take it back in there and put it in the canvas hold-all!" Miss Greta settled back, wearily against the

ulster as Madge and Julian struggled into the next room with the rug between them. "I understood Madge was going to bring the maid to do the packing," Miss Greta murmured discontentedly.

Napier leaned forward.

"Do you approve this plan of Miss Ellis going to Germany?" he asked.

"I can easily believe you don't approve it," she said with a gleam of Schadenfreüde.

"I do more than disapprove," he answered under his breath. "I shall prevent it."

"Oh? And how do you propose to do that?"

"I had meant to put a spoke in the passport wheel, but there's a better, a shorter way."

"Oh?"

He leaned nearer.

focus in the china-blue eyes. "That's what I came up for," Napier added. There was silence for an instant except for the talk floating in through the open door: "No, let's fold it in three. I'll show you."

Was it the threat to enlighten Julian which had given her pause? "We have Singleton down-stairs,"-Napier quietly suggested witnesses for the convincing of Mr. Grant-"and Grindley up."

"As if I did n't know!"

"Then you must know, too, that we are none of us making this experience harder for you than is necessary. But"-their eyes met "we are not going to let you take that girl along."

"Could n't live without her, eh?" she burst out. For the first time in Napier's experience of her there was a common tang in her tone.

He rose to his feet.

"Simply, she is not going with you. I thought you might prefer to decide this yourself, or to tell her you have ascertained that the passport difficulty is insuperable;

"Exactly. I am too considerate of her to let her even apply for a passport without my first of all-enlightening her before you leave."

"Ah," she drew in her breath—“you would, would you?"

Napier was aware of having to brace himself to meet the unexpected dart of malignity out of the round eyes. But it passed, taking in the open door of the bedroom as it dropped, and in its place came pure scorn, controlled, intensely quiet, as she inquired in her society manner:

"And you think Nan would believe you? You suppose for one moment that your word would stand any chance against mine?"

Napier concealed his harrowing doubt on this head.

"I am to understand, then, you are willing that the facts we have been at pains to suppress should be known? Very well. I 'll begin by enlightening Mr. Grant and saving him the trouble of seeing about the passport." He caught the sudden shift of

on the film of handkerchief held affectedly in the thick, white hand. There was no sign of anxiety or haste in either her face or weary attitude. "The alternative,” Napier went on in a quick undertone, "is that she will be staying behind with full knowledge of all that we have up to now kept back."

She turned to him with smothered vehemence.

"It never was my plan. I don't know what on earth I 'd do with her." Napier repressed the jubilation crying out in his heart.

"The question, as I say, is merely, Will you give her up after struggle and exposure or will you do it quietly?"

She seemed to make a rapid calculation. "If I agree to this, will you promiseshe shall never know-what I 've gone through this last-twenty-four hours?" The handkerchief went to her lips.

"No," said Napier, sternly, "but I'll promise that I won't enlighten her before you leave."

"And Mr. Grant? If you tell him, you

He could n't

may as well tell every one.
keep anything to save his neck."

"If you keep to the course I 've laid down, I don't know any special reason for enlightening Mr. Grant." Napier was secretly aware that he was showing weakness over the point. Yet, after all, in a few hours the woman would be out of the country. Behind that wall of the German lines she would be lost.

By the time Julian returned to the sitting-room Miss Greta had accepted the inevitable.

"I don't want to seem rude,"—she turned to Napier with her weary grace,— "but I think I must ask to be left alone awhile. Perhaps you 'll be so very kind as to explain to Mr. Grant that in these circumstances of family affliction"-only Napier recognized the Adelphi touch in phrase and in the lace-bordered handkerchief pressed to heroic lips-"the more I think of it, the more I feel it would be best for me to go home alone."

CHAPTER XIX

NAPIER went back to the hotel at five o'clock with Julian, who drove his own big car, to take the three to the station. The progress was slow and penitential, for Miss Greta declined to lose sight of the two taxis that followed with the luggage. Napier, with Madge at his side, sitting opposite Nan and Miss Greta, found himself taking refuge from the unconscious reproach in Nan's face by studying the buttons on Miss Greta's ulster. There were ȧ great many of those buttons. The immense labor of changing them induced. thoughtfulness. They were thicker, but were n't the bigger ones exactly sovereign size? The smaller, on collar, cuffs, and pocket-flaps, were n't they precisely of halfsovereign dimensions, excepting, again, in thickness? He began to count them with

care.

"Look at that shop!" Nan leaned forward over the long, narrow cardboard box she was carrying.

The front glass was smashed, the place empty. Over the door was a sign: "Zim

merman, Family Baker." A little way on stood yet another shop with demolished front. On the opposite side was a third. There were seven in all, and over each a German name.

Nan looked away. Miss Greta seemed not to have heard the exclamation, seemed to see nothing.

More recruits for the army came by, but no singing among this lot. They came limping along, out of step, a sorry enough crew, pasty-faced, undersized, in ill-fitting, shabby civilian clothes.

The china-blue eyes that had "gone blind" in front of raided German shops were full of vision before this mockery of militarism. As she looked out upon the human refuse for which War had found a use at last, the subtle pity in Miss Greta's face asked as plain as words, What chance have these poor, deluded "volunteers" against the well-drilled German, fed and fashioned for war?

The station at last! As Napier helped Miss Greta out, the front of her ulster swung heavily against his leg. "Sovereigns!" he said to himself.

The station was already densely crowded. While Napier and Madge mounted guard over behemoth and the lesser luggage, Julian and Nan, with Miss Greta between them, disappeared in the crush.

When the reconnoitering party reappeared, Singleton was with them, porters at his beck, in his hand Miss Greta's ticket, passport, and German and Dutch money to the value of twenty pounds. He met the chief inspector, as if by appointment, near the luggage that loomed so important by contrast with that of other travelers.

To Miss Greta, although in her ugly ulster she looked less a person of consequence than she might, was plainly accorded a special consideration. Mr. Singleton was there to see to that. He could not, to be sure, prevent some respectful interrogation as to the money, etc., she was taking out of the country, some perfunctory examination of luggage.

The only anxious face in the group was Nan's. Miss Greta, calm as a May morn

ing, her round eyes trustingly raised to the inspector's face, with eighty pounds in English gold on her coat, and how much more elsewhere who should say, offering her purse and keys.

"One is an American lock. I may have to help you with that," she said sweetly.

Napier half turned his back on them, but he stood so that he could keep an eye on the stricken face above the long cardboard box which Nan was carrying as if it were an infant. Through the din Greta's innocent accents reached him:

"Nobody ever told me! Oh, dear, my poor little savings!" When Nan turned her tear-filled eyes away from the group about behemoth, Napier joined her.

"What shall you do after-after she is gone?" he asked.

"I have n't an idea beyond going back. to the hotel to wait for my cable from home." She made a diversion of opening the long cardboard box and taking out six glorious roses tied with leaf-green and rose-colored ribbon. But she held the flowers absently.

"I shall be at my chambers. If I can be of any―"

"Oh, thank you. I sha'n't need any

thing."

When Napier faced round again, Greta was smiling gently on the melted inspector. Perhaps that functionary would n't have "forgotten" to confiscate the few pieces. of gold so frankly shown had he known they were only the mere residue left over from the lady's midnight activities.

They found themselves on the platform with, unhappily, time still to spare. Singleton made polite conversation with Miss Greta, abetted by Julian and Madge, who was taking the approaching parting with astonishing composure, a lesson to poor Nan, who could n't keep the tears out of her eyes. Her effort to smile very nearly cost both her and Napier their self-possession. She went abruptly away from him, and stood dumb behind Greta, at Julian's side.

"Take your places!"

A whistle blew. Miss Greta was shaking hands with Singleton.

"Thank you so much. You have been kind." Her good-bys to Julian and to Napier were quieter, but entirely cordial. She embraced Madge with dramatic fervor: "My little girl! We 'll never forget-"

Nan stood, the tears running down her cheeks unchecked, and probably unaware. A little apart she stood, all her sympathy, her very soul, flowing out as a final offering. "Good-by, Nanchen!" Miss Greta kissed her on both cheeks. "You 'll write me, dear child? You won't forget me?"

Nan was far past power of words. She thrust the roses toward Greta with a look that made Napier himself feel he could fall to crying. Even Miss Greta seemed touched by some final compunction. The carriage-door had no sooner slammed on her than she turned suddenly as if she had forgotten something. "Nanchen!" she leaned out and took the girl's face in her two hands. She bent and whispered. The guards shouted. The train began to move.

"Oh, will you? Will you, Greta?" Nan was running along the platform with upturned face.

Miss Greta leaned far out, giving a flutter of white to the wind and leaving at smile for memory.

Thank God! Napier breathed an inward prayer. She can't do any more harm here.

Nan stood staring at the last coaches. Napier touched her arm.

"Well?" he said gently.

"I ought n't to be miserable," she wiped her wet cheeks. "To have Greta soon to help me to bear things-ought to make it possible to bear them now."

"You are still counting on her help?" She nodded.

"I'm to hold myself ready." "Ready for what?"

"To join her. I shall pack my trunk to-night."

At the tail of the dispersing crowd they were following Julian and Madge down the platform. Napier slowed his pace, looking down at the face beside him. Weeks, months of passionate, fruitless waiting-no!