of the world. To-day Germany is on her feet again, her hands are uplifted, she is feeling for the air. She is trying to drag down from the heavens the things that belong to her. Germany has a great future, you know, Major Fawley.”
“No one doubts that,” he replied.
She looked around the room curiously and last of all at him, at his drawn but wholesome-looking face, his deep-set visionary eyes, his air of immense self-control. She took note of all the other things which appeal to a woman, the little wave in his hair brushed back by the ears, the humorous lines about his firm mouth. He possessed to the fullest extent the distinction of the class to which they both belonged.
“Do you mind if I become very personal for a few moments?” she asked abruptly.
“So long as you do not find too much fault with me.”
“The men in the Secret Service, whom I have come across,” she began, “our Italian Secret Service, I mean, of course, and the French, travel under false names, generally assuming a different status to their real one. They travel with little luggage, they stay in weird hotels in streets that no one ever heard of, and life for them seems to be filled with a desire to escape from their own personality. Here are you staying in the best-known hotel in Berlin under your own name, wearing the clothes and using the speech of your order. There on your writing table is your dressing case fitted with an ordinary lock and with your name in full stamped upon it. I begin to think that you must be a fraud. I should not be surprised to find that your proper name even was inscribed in the hotel register.”
“Guilty to everything,” he confessed, pushing his chair a little nearer to hers and closer to the window. “But then you must remember that the Secret Service of the old order has gone out. The memoirs writer and the novelist have given away our fireworks. We are only subtle now by being terribly and painfully obvious.”
“You may be speaking the truth,” she murmured, “but it seems to me that it must be a dangerous experiment. I could recall to myself the names of at least a dozen people who know that a Major Fawley is here on behalf of a certain branch of the Italian Government to see for himself and report upon the situation. It would be worth the while of more than one of them to make sure that you never returned to Rome.”
“There are certain risks to be run, of course,” he admitted. “The only point is that I came to the conclusion some years ago that one runs them in a more dignified fashion and with just as much chance of success by abandoning the old methods.”
She sat perfectly silent for some time. They were both looking downwards at the thronged and brilliantly lit streets, the surging masses of human beings, listening to the hoarse mutterings of voices punctuated sometimes with the shouting of excited pedestrians. There was a certain tenseness underneath it all. The trampling of feet upon the pavement was like the breaking of an incoming tide. One had the idea of mighty forces straining at a yielding leash. Elida swung suddenly around.
“You play the game of frankness wonderfully,” she said bitterly, “but there are times when you fall down.”
“As for instance?”
“When you make enquiries of the concierge about the air services to Rome. When you send for a time-table to compare the trains and when you slip into the side entrance at Cook’s in the twilight an hour or so later and take your ticket for England!”
“You have had me followed?” he asked.
“It has been necessary,” she told him. “What has England to do with your report to Berati?”
His eyes seemed to be watching the black mass of people below, but he smiled reflectively.
“What an advertisement this last coup of yours is for the open methods of diplomacy,” he observed. “Would it surprise you very much to know that I can take the night plane to Croydon, catch the International Airways to Rome, and be there a little quicker than any way I have discovered yet of sailing over the Alps?”
“Will you turn your head and look at me, please?”
He obeyed at once.
“You are not going to London, then?” she persisted. “Berati has abandoned that old idea of his of seeking English sympathies?”
Fawley rose to his feet and Elida’s heart sank. She knew very well that during the last few minutes, ever since, in fact, she had confessed to her surveillance over him, she had lost everything she had striven so hard to gain. Her bid for his supreme confidence had failed. Before she actually realised what had happened, she was moving towards the door. He was speaking meaningless words; his tone, his expression had changed. All the humanity seemed to have left his face. Even the admiration which had gleamed more than once in his eyes and the memory of which she had treasured all the evening had become the admiration of a man for an attractive doll.
“You are under your own roof,” he remarked, as he opened the door. “You will forgive me if I do not offer to conduct you to your aunt’s apartment?”
He bent over her cold fingers.
“Why are you angry with me?” she asked passionately.
He looked at her with a gleam of sadness in his eyes, the knob of the door in his hand.
“My dear Elida,” he expostulated, “you know very well that the only feeling I dare permit myself to have for you is one of sincere admiration.”
CHAPTER XVIII
His Excellency the Marchese Marius di Vasena, Ambassador from Italy to the Court of St. James’s, threw himself back in his chair and held out his hands to his unexpected visitor with a gesture of astonishment. He waved his secretary away. It had really been a very anxious week and this was a form of relaxation which appealed to him.
“Elida!” he exclaimed, embracing his favourite niece. “What on earth does this mean? I saw pictures of you last week with all the royalties at Monte Carlo. Has your aunt any idea?”
“Not the slightest,” Elida laughed.
“But how did you arrive?”
“Oh, I just came,” she replied. “I did not arrive direct. I had some places to visit on the way. As a matter of fact, I left Monte Carlo a fortnight ago. Yesterday I was in Paris but I had a sudden feeling that I must see you, dear Uncle. So here I am!”
“And the need for all this haste?” the Ambassador asked courteously, as he arranged an easy-chair for his niece. “If one could only believe that it was impatience to see your elderly but affectionate relative!”
She laughed—a soft rippling effort of mirth.
“I am always happy to see you, my dear Uncle, that you know,” she assured him. “That is why I was so unhappy when you were given London. Yesterday, however, a great desire swept over me.”
“And that was—?”
“To attend the American Ambassador’s
