“And how,” she asked demurely, “does my fiance propose to entertain me this evening?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“With the exception of one half-hour,” he replied unexpectedly, “I am wholly at your service.”

“I am exacting,” she declared.  “I demand that half-hour also.”

“I am afraid that I could not allow anything to interfere with one brief call which I must pay.”

“In Downing Street?”

“Precisely!”

“You go to visit your friend at the Foreign Office?”

“Immediately I have called at my rooms.”

She looked away from him out of the window.  Beneath her veil her eyes were a little misty.  She saw nothing of the trimly partitioned fields, the rolling pastoral country.  Before her vision tragedies seemed to pass,—­the blood-stained paraphernalia of the battlefield, the empty, stricken homes, the sobbing women in black, striving to comfort their children whilst their own hearts were breaking.  When she turned away from the window, her face was hardened.  Once more she found herself almost hating the man who was her companion.  Whatever might come afterwards, at that moment she had the sensations of a murderess.

“You may know when you sleep to-night,” she exclaimed, “that you will be the blood-guiltiest man in the world!”

“I would not dispute the title,” he observed politely, “with your friend the Hohenzollern.”

“He is not my friend,” she retorted, her tone vibrating with passion.  “I am a traitress in your eyes because I have received a communication from Germany.  From whom does it come, do you think?  From the Court?  From the Chancellor or one of his myrmidons?  Fool!  It comes from those who hate the whole military party.  It comes from the Germany whose people have been befooled and strangled throughout the war.  It comes from the people whom your politicians have sought to reach and failed.”

“The suggestion is interesting,” he remarked coldly, “but improbable.”

“Do you know,” she said, leaning a little forward and looking at him fixedly, “if I were really your fiancee—­worse! if I were really your wife—­I think that before long I should be a murderess!”

“Do you dislike me as much as all that?”

“I hate you!  I think you are the most pigheaded, obstinate, self-satisfied, ignorant creature who ever ruined a great cause.”

He accepted the lash of her words without any sign of offence,—­ seemed, indeed, inclined to treat them reflectively.

“Come,” he protested, “you have wasted a lot of breath in abusing me.  Why not justify it?  Tell me the story of yourself and those who are associated with you in this secret correspondence with Germany?  If you are working for a good end, let me know of it.  You blame me for judging you, for maintaining a certain definite poise.  You are not reasonable, you know.”

“I blame you for being what you are,” she answered breathlessly.  “If you were a person who understood, who felt the great stir of humanity outside your own little circle, who could look across your seas and realise that nationality is accidental and that the brotherhood of man throughout the world is the only real fact worthy of consideration—­ah! if you could realise these things, I could talk, I could explain.”