“Every sort.  All you can give.  All you can give.”

He looked at her wearily; his face had become pallid again; the dark hollows of dissipation showed like bruises.

“I don’t understand,” he said.  “I’m no good, you know that.  I’m done in, finished.  I couldn’t help you with your work if I wanted to.  There’s nothing left of me.  I am not to be depended on.”

And suddenly, in his eyes of a boy, his self-hatred was revealed to her in one savage gleam.

“No good,” he muttered feverishly, “not to be trusted—­no will-power left....  It was in me, I suppose, to become the drunkard I am—­”

“You are not!” cried the girl fiercely.  “Don’t say it!”

“Why not?  I am!”

“You can fight your way free!” His laugh frightened her.

“Fight?  I’ve done that.  They tried to pump me that way, too—­tried to break me—­break my brain to pieces—­by stopping my liquor....  I suppose they thought I might really go insane, as they gave it back after a while—­after a few centuries in hell—­and tried to make me talk by other methods—­

“Don’t, please.”  She turned her head swiftly, unable to control her quivering face.

“Why not?”

“I can’t bear it.”

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to shock you.”

“I know.”  She sat for a while with head averted; and presently spoke, sitting so: 

“We’ll fight it, anyway,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“If you’ll let me—­”

After a silence she turned and looked at him.  He .stammered, very red: 

“I don’t quite know why you speak to me so.”

She herself was not entirely clear on that point, either.  After all, her business with this man was to use him in the service of her Government.”

“What is the great secret?” she asked calmly.

After a long while he said, lying there very still:  “So you have even heard about that.”

“I have heard about it; that is all.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“All I know about it is that there is such a thing—­something known to certain Germans, and by them spoken of as the great secret.  I imagine, of course, that it is some vital military secret which they desire to guard.”

“Is that all you know about it?”

“No, not all.”  She looked at him gravely out of very clear, honest eyes: 

“I know, also, that the Berlin Government has ordered its agents to discover your whereabouts, and to’silence’ you.”

He gazed at her quite blandly for a moment, then, to her amazement, he laughed—­such a clear, untroubled, boyish laugh that her constrained expression softened in sympathy.

“Do you think that Berlin doesn’t mean it?” she asked, brightening a little.

“Mean it?  Oh, I’m jolly sure Berlin means it!”

“Then why—­”

“Why do I laugh?”