Suppose—­but no.  Her chief would be dining at home, as was his habit.  Then, anyway, there could be no harm.  She was concerned in this thing.  She had a right.  She even told herself it was imperative she should know what had transpired at the interview she had brought about.  Besides, was there not the possibility of certain rougnnesses occurring between the two men which it might be within her power to smooth down?  That was surely so.  She had no right to miss any opportunity of furthering the ends of her own people.

Then she laughed outright.  Oh, it was excuse.  She knew.  She was looking forward to the evening.  Of course she was.  Then, just as suddenly all desire to laugh expired.  Why?  Why was she looking forward to dining with Bull Sternford?

Bull!  What a quaint name.  She had thought of it before.  She had thought of it at the time when the lonely missionary of the forest had told her of him.

Swiftly her thought passed on to her meeting with the man himself.  She remembered her nervousness when she had first looked into his big, wholesome face, with its clear, searching eyes.  Yes, she had realised then the truth of Father Adam’s description.  He would as soon fight as laugh.  There could be no doubt of it.

And then those days on the Myra.  She recalled their talk of the sea-gulls, and of the men of the forests, and she remembered the almost brutal contempt for them he had so downrightly expressed.  Then the moment of disaster to herself.  It was he who had saved her, he who had fought for her, although he had been in little better case himself.

What was it they had told her?  He must be bought or smashed.  She wondered if they realised the man they were dealing with.  She wondered what they would have felt and thought if they had listened to the confident assurance of Father Adam.  If they had listened to Bull Sternford himself, and learned to know him as she had already learned to know him.  The Skandinavia was powerful, but was it powerful enough to deal as they desired with this man who was as ready to fight as to laugh?

She shook her head.  And it was a negative movement she was unaware of.  Well, anyway, the game had begun, and she was in it.  Her duty was clear enough.  And meanwhile she would miss no opportunity to pull her whole weight for her side, even when she knew that was not the whole thought in her mind.

But somehow there were things she regretted when she remembered the fight ahead.  She regretted the moment when this man had saved her from almost certain death against the iron stanchions and sides of the Myra.  She regretted his fine eyes, and he had fine eyes which looked so squarely out of their setting.  Then, too, he had been so kindly concerned that she should achieve the mission upon which she had embarked.  It would have been so easy and even exacting had he been a man of less generous impulse.  A man whom she could have thoroughly disliked.  But he was the reverse of all those things which make it a joy to hurt.  He was—­