“You—­you would not deceive me,” she faltered.  “Yet tell me more.”

“I can’t;” answered Jack, with a shake of his head.  “Further than that, I cannot go.”

“Oh, I see,” she nodded, “and I do not blame you.  You feel that, whatever you told me, I would tell him.  But I wouldn’t!”

Though the girl’s face was still fearfully pallid, her eyes, as she turned to gaze into the submarine boy’s face, flashed with a new fire.

Then, after a brief pause: 

“Whatever he is, or has done, I am an American,” she added, quietly.

“This has been a miserable fifteen minutes for me.” responded Jack Benson.  “I have been torn between the impulse to mind my own business, and the fear that you may be throwing yourself away on a man whom you would promptly learn to despise.”

“I shall never give Donald Graves another thought as a lover,” the girl rejoined, promptly.  “Nor shall I shelter him.  I am going to him now!”

“Then you have an appointment with him?  You know where to find him?”

“Yes,” replied the girl, looking at the submarine boy rather queerly.  “Do you care to go with me to meet Donald Graves—­the one you knew as Millard?  But I am stupid, or worse.  That would be to run you into needless danger—­for such a man as I now know Donald Graves to be would be desperate.”

“I am not afraid of him,” retorted Jack quietly.  “If you fear only for me, I beg you to take me to him!”

CHAPTER XXI

DAISY HUSTON DECIDES FOR THE FLAG

“It is a somewhat lonely place, on the outskirts of the city,” warned the girl.  “Mr. Graves had thought that, if no other chance offered, he might possibly get away by leaving that house and taking to the country roads.  For he knows that, if he takes a train at any point, he won’t ride five miles before he’ll find himself in the clutches of a Secret Service man.  Oh, he knows how well the trains and the steamboats will be watched.  He dreads, even, that the country roads will be watched.”

“I don’t know anything about the Secret Service lines that are out,” Jack confessed, honestly.  “Yet I imagine that every possible precaution has been taken to capture Millard—­or Graves.”

“You do not know my name,” cried the girl, as though struck by a sudden thought.  “Mr. Benson, you have been wrapped in so much mystery, so much deceit, so much lying and treachery that I won’t even have you guess whether I am telling you the truth.  Here is my card-case.  Take out a card for yourself.”

The request was so much like a command that Benson obeyed.  On the card, in Old English script, he read: 

“Miss Daisy Huston.”

“I thank you, Miss Huston,” he acknowledged, gravely, handing back her card-case.

“Will you signal the driver to stop?” she requested.  They were now driving through the western part of Washington.