The Marjolana route had been chosen for a purpose.  In one town Ivery met and talked to a civilian official, and more than once the car slowed down and someone appeared from the wayside to speak a word and vanish.  She was assisting at the last gathering up of the threads of a great plan, before the Wild Birds returned to their nest.  Mostly these conferences seemed to be in Italian, but once or twice she gathered from the movement of the lips that German was spoken and that this rough peasant or that black-hatted bourgeois was not of Italian blood.

Early in the morning, soon after she awoke, Ivery had stopped the car and offered her a well-provided luncheon basket.  She could eat nothing, and watched him breakfast off sandwiches beside the driver.  In the afternoon he asked her permission to sit with her.  The car drew up in a lonely place, and a tea-basket was produced by the chauffeur.  Ivery made tea, for she seemed too listless to move, and she drank a cup with him.  After that he remained beside her.

‘In half an hour we shall be out of Italy,’ he said.  The car was running up a long valley to the curious hollow between snowy saddles which is the crest of the Marjolana.  He showed her the place on a road map.  As the altitude increased and the air grew colder he wrapped the rugs closer around her and apologized for the absence of a foot-warmer.  ‘In a little,’ he said, ’we shall be in the land where your slightest wish will be law.’

She dozed again and so missed the frontier post.  When she woke the car was slipping down the long curves of the Weiss valley, before it narrows to the gorge through which it debouches on Grunewald.

‘We are in Switzerland now,’ she heard his voice say.  It may have been fancy, but it seemed to her that there was a new note in it.  He spoke to her with the assurance of possession.  They were outside the country of the Allies, and in a land where his web was thickly spread.

‘Where do we stop tonight?’ she asked timidly.

’I fear we cannot stop.  Tonight also you must put up with the car.  I have a little errand to do on the way, which will delay us a few minutes, and then we press on.  Tomorrow, my fairest one, fatigue will be ended.’

There was no mistake now about the note of possession in his voice.  Mary’s heart began to beat fast and wild.  The trap had closed down on her and she saw the folly of her courage.  It had delivered her bound and gagged into the hands of one whom she loathed more deeply every moment, whose proximity was less welcome than a snake’s.  She had to bite hard on her lip to keep from screaming.

The weather had changed and it was snowing hard, the same storm that had greeted us on the Col of the Swallows.  The pace was slower now, and Ivery grew restless.  He looked frequently at his watch, and snatched the speaking-tube to talk to the driver.  Mary caught the word ‘St Anton’.

‘Do we go by St Anton?’ she found voice to ask.