‘You!’ she cried.  She had sunk back again on the wicker chair.

‘I have come as I promised,’ he said, ’but a little earlier.  You will forgive me my eagerness to be with you.’

She did not heed his words, for her mind was feverishly busy.  My letter had been a fraud and this man had discovered our plans.  She was alone with him, for it would be hours before her friends came from Chiavagno.  He had the game in his hands, and of all our confederacy she alone remained to confront him.  Mary’s courage was pretty near perfect, and for the moment she did not think of herself or her own fate.  That came later.  She was possessed with poignant disappointment at our failure.  All our efforts had gone to the winds, and the enemy had won with contemptuous ease.  Her nervousness disappeared before the intense regret, and her brain set coolly and busily to work.

It was a new Ivery who confronted her, a man with vigour and purpose in every line of him and the quiet confidence of power.  He spoke with a serious courtesy.

‘The time for make-believe is past,’ he was saying.  ’We have fenced with each other.  I have told you only half the truth, and you have always kept me at arm’s length.  But you knew in your heart, my dearest lady, that there must be the full truth between us some day, and that day has come.  I have often told you that I love you.  I do not come now to repeat that declaration.  I come to ask you to entrust yourself to me, to join your fate to mine, for I can promise you the happiness which you deserve.’

He pulled up a chair and sat beside her.  I cannot put down all that he said, for Mary, once she grasped the drift of it, was busy with her own thoughts and did not listen.  But I gather from her that he was very candid and seemed to grow as he spoke in mental and moral stature.  He told her who he was and what his work had been.  He claimed the same purpose as hers, a hatred of war and a passion to rebuild the world into decency.  But now he drew a different moral.  He was a German:  it was through Germany alone that peace and regeneration could come.  His country was purged from her faults, and the marvellous German discipline was about to prove itself in the eye of gods and men.  He told her what he had told me in the room at the Pink Chalet, but with another colouring.  Germany was not vengeful or vainglorious, only patient and merciful.  God was about to give her the power to decide the world’s fate, and it was for him and his kind to see that the decision was beneficent.  The greater task of his people was only now beginning.

That was the gist of his talk.  She appeared to listen, but her mind was far away.  She must delay him for two hours, three hours, four hours.  If not, she must keep beside him.  She was the only one of our company left in touch with the enemy . . .

‘I go to Germany now,’ he was saying.  ’I want you to come with me—­to be my wife.’