Yet she must see him, she told herself.  Perhaps this very day he might be arrested and imprisoned.  She might never again have the opportunity of seeing him alone and of talking with him.  Into her troubled brain came a daring thought.  Perhaps it was not too late, even yet, to turn him from his evil course.  Was there, she wishfully wondered, any possibility of her leading him, through his love for her, to forsake his comrades, even to betray them?  No, she admitted to herself, that was a preposterous idea.  He was too dominating, too forceful, too determined, to be influenced to anything against his will.

“May I come in, please?” he kept insisting over the ’phone.

“Only for a minute,” she answered tremulously.  “I’m going out soon.  I have an engagement.”

“I’ll come right over.  I will not keep you long.”

As she awaited his arrival, subconsciously desirous of looking her best in his presence, she stopped almost mechanically before her mirror to adjust her hair, letting him wait for her for a few minutes.

He sprang forward to meet her as she entered the room where he was, his face beaming with delight at the sight of her.

“Jane,” he cried, with a volume of meaning in the monosyllable, as seizing her hand, he held it tightly and gazed earnestly into her face.

Bravely she tried to meet his gaze, to read in his face if she could the object of his unexpected visit, but her eyes fell before his, and the hot blood surged into her cheeks.  Within her raged a desperate battle between her head and heart.  Mingled with her unwelcome quickening of the pulse at his approach and admiration for his audacity in coming to her when he must know that she knew what he was, there was also an overwhelming sense of futile rage that he, a scheming German plotter, dared intrude his presence into an American home.

“I’m glad to see you appear no worse for your accident,” he said, releasing her hand at last.  “You got home all right, without attracting any one’s notice?”

“Oh, yes,” she answered, trying to make her reply seem wholly indifferent and disinterested.

“Your chauffeur is all right, too,” he went on.  “I telephoned this morning.  He had already left the doctor’s.  There’s nothing more the matter with him than a broken arm and a scalp wound.  That’s fortunate, isn’t it?”

“Very fortunate,” she admitted.

All at once as they stood there there seemed to have arisen between them an invisible, impenetrable barrier.  They faced each other wordlessly, each embarrassed by the knowledge of the secret gulf that was between them.  Hoff was the first to recover from it.

“Come,” he said, “sit down.  There is something I wish to say to you,—­something of the utmost importance, Jane.”