Anonyma kept her head.

First she thought it was the face of a bather, the path to whose clothes she was unwittingly barring.

Then she thought it was the face of a picnicker, resentful of her intrusion.

Then she thought it was the face of a German spy.

The first two of these three thoughts she rejected because the weather reduced their possibility to a minimum.  The third she instinctively adopted as a certainty.  The face at once became obviously German in her eyes.  It was broader about the chin than about the forehead, it was pink, the architecture of the nose was painfully un-English.

She scanned the sea for the periscope of a submarine.

Anonyma remembered that she had written in her notebook, a day or two before, an intimate description of the coast as seen from the Ring.  She also remembered distinctly seeing in the bar of the inn a notice warning her to the effect that walls—­and probably breakwaters—­have ears and eyes in these days, and that the German Government has a persistent wish to possess itself of private diaries and notebooks.

“I am having an adventure,” said Mrs. Gustus.  “I must keep cool.”

She got up from her breakwater, holding her notebook very tightly, and began to walk away.  When she looked back, she saw the top of the man’s head moving behind the breakwater, in a parallel direction to her own course.  When he reached the point where the breakwater ended and denied him cover, he wavered for a moment, and then, with an expression of elaborate indifference, followed her.

“I must keep even cooler than this,” thought Anonyma.  “I must try and catch the spy.”

She walked across some waste land sown with memories of picnics, and reached the main road.  The man crossed the waste land behind her.  He tried in a futile way to look as if he were not doing so.

On the main road, Anonyma turned and waited for him.  It seemed useless in that empty landscape to sustain the pretence that they were unaware of each other.

“Did you wish to speak to me?” she asked, as well as she could for the great lump of excitement that beat in her throat.  Before her eyes visions of headlines danced:  “Lady novelist’s plucky capture of A spy.”

The man became dark red as she spoke.  “Yes,” he said.  “I wanted to ask you what you were writing in that notebook?”

Anonyma paused for a moment, as she decided what she ought to do.  Then she said in a hoarse voice:  “I have detailed military information about this coast for twenty miles round in my notebook, with accurate reports as to the depth of the water.  If you come to my lodgings in D——­, I can show you a map that I have made.”

A tremor ran through the stranger.

“A map?” he repeated.

“Yes, a map,” said Anonyma; and then, as he did not move, she added on the spur of the moment, “Also a design for a new kind of bomb which I bought from a man in London.”