en one. I have friends--highly placed friends--in my own
country, who in their hearts feel as I do about the war. It is through
them that I am able to turn my back upon Europe. I have done my share
of fighting," he went on sadly, "and the horror of it will never quite
leave me. I think that no one has ever charged me with shirking my duty,
and yet the sheer, black ugliness of this ghastly struggle, its criminal
inutility, have got into my blood so that I think I would rather pass
out of the world in some simple way than find myself back again in that
debauch of blood. Is this cowardice, Philippa?"

She looked at him with shining eyes.

"There isn't any one in the world," she said, "who could call you a
coward. Whatever I may decide, whatever I may feel towards you, that at
least I know."

He kissed her fingers.

"At ten o'clock," he began--

"But listen," she interrupted. "Apart from anything which Dick might
do, you are in terrible danger here, all the more if you really have
accomplished something. Why not go now, at this moment? Why wait? These
few hours may make all the difference."

He smiled.

"They may, indeed, make all the difference to my life," he answered.
"That is for you."

He followed Mills, who had obeyed her summons, out of the room. Philippa
moved to the window and watched him until he had disappeared. Then very
slowly she left the room, walked up the stairs, made her way to her own
little suite of apartments, and locked the door.

CHAPTER XXX

It was a happy, if a trifle hysterical little dinner party that evening
at Mainsail Haul. Philippa was at times unusually silent, but Helen had
expanded in the joy of her great happiness. Richard, shaved and with
his hair cut, attired once more in the garb of civilisation, seemed
a different person. Even in these few hours the lines about his mouth
seemed less pronounced. They talked freely of Maderstrom.

"A regular 'Vanity Fair' problem," Richard declared, balancing his wine
glass between his fingers, "a problem, too, which I can't say I have
solved altogether yet. The only thing is that if he is really going
to-night, I don't see why I shouldn't let the matter drift out of my
mind."

"It is so much better," Helen agreed. "Try as hard as ever I can, I
cannot picture his doing any harm to anybody. And as for any information
he may have gained here, well, I think that we can safely let him take
it back to Germany."

"He was always," Richar