He looked at her almost in surprise.

“You seem to know the man’s methods,” he observed.

“I do,” she answered, “and I detest them.  Now, Francis, please tell me the truth.  Is your name, too, upon that long roll of those who are pledged to assist his country?”

“It is,” he admitted.

She drew a little away.

“You admit it?  You have already consented?”

“I have drawn a quarter’s salary,” Norgate confessed.  “I have entered Selingman’s corps of the German Secret Service.”

“You mean that you are a traitor!” she exclaimed.

“A traitor to the false England of to-day,” Norgate replied, “a friend, I hope, of the real England.”

She sat quite still for some moments.

“Somehow or other,” she said, “I scarcely fancied that you would give in so easily.”

“You seem disappointed,” he remarked, “yet, after all, am I not on your side?”

“I suppose so,” she answered, without enthusiasm.

There was another and a more prolonged silence.  Norgate rose at last to his feet.  He walked restlessly to the end of the room and back again.  A dark mass of clouds had rolled up; the air seemed almost sulphurous with the presage of a coming storm.  They looked out into the gathering darkness.

“I don’t understand,” he said.  “You are Austrian; that is the same as German.  I tell you that I have come over on your side.  You seem disappointed.”

“Perhaps I am,” she admitted, standing up, too, and linking her arm through his.  “You see, my mother was English, and they say that I am entirely like her.  I was brought up here in the English country.  Sometimes my life at Vienna and Berlin seems almost like a dream to me, something unreal, as though I were playing at being some other woman.  When I am back here, I feel as though I had come home.  Do you know really that nothing would make me happier than to hear or think nothing about duty, to just know that I had come back to England to stay, and that you were English, and that we were going to live just the sort of life I pictured to myself that two people could live so happily over here, without too much ambition, without intrigue, simply and honestly.  I am a little weary of cities and courts, Francis.  To-night more than ever England seems to appeal to me, to remind me that I am one of her daughters.”

“Are you trying me, Anna?” he asked hoarsely.

“Trying you?  Of course not!” she answered.  “I am speaking to you just simply and naturally, because you are the one person in the world to whom I may speak like that.”

“Then let’s drop it, both of us!” he exclaimed, holding her arm tightly to his.  “Courts and cities can do without you, and Selingman can do without me.  We’ll take a cottage somewhere and live through these evil days.”

She shook her head.

“You and I are not like that, Francis,” she declared.  “When the storm breaks, we mustn’t be found hiding in our holes.  You know that quite well.  It is for us to decide what part we may play.  You have chosen.  So, in a measure, have I. Tomorrow I am going on a secret mission to Italy.”