but now, as she rose and came towards him, he
recognized her. It was the wife of Bettermann, the inventor, the
shape upon the balcony of the chalet who had overlooked their
experiments and overheard the bargain they had made.

Herr Haase bowed. "Gnadige Frau?"

He remembered her as little and pleasantly pretty; her presence above
them on the balcony had touched his German sentimentalism. She was
pretty now, with her softness and blossom-like fragility, but with it
was a tensity, a sort of frightened desperation.

She hesitated for words, facing him with lips that trembled, and
large, painful eyes of nervousness. "He he is here," she said, at
last. "My husband they sent a car to fetch him to them. He is up
there now, with them!"

Herr Haase did not understand. "But yes, gracious lady," he answered.
"Why not? The Herr Baron wished to speak to him."

She put out a small gloved hand uncertainly and touched his sleeve.

"No," she said. "Tell me! I, I am so afraid. That other, the officer
who cut Egon's face my husband's I mean, he has arrived? Tell me,
mein Herr! Oh, I thought you would tell me; I saw you the other day,
and those others never spoke to you, and you were the only one who
looked kind and honest." She gulped and recovered. "He has arrived?"

"Well, now," began Herr Haase paternally. In all his official life he
had never "told" anything. Her small face, German to its very
coloring, pretty and pleading, tore at him.

"Yes, he has arrived," he said shortly. "I have I have just seen
him."

"Oh!" It was almost a cry. "Then then they will do it? Mein Herr,
mein Herr, help me! Egon, he has been thinking only of this for
years; and now, if he does it, he will think of nothing else all his
life. And he mustn't he mustn't! It's it will be madness. I know him.
Mein Herr, there is nobody else I can ask; help me!"

The small gloved hand was holding him now, holding by the sleeve of
his superlative black coat of ceremony, plucking at it, striving to
stir him to sympathy and understanding; the face, hopeful and afraid,
strained up at him.

Gently he detached the gloved hand on his sleeve, holding it a second
in his own before letting it go.

"Listen," he said. "That bargain is cancelled. Colonel von Specht
died to-day."

He turned forthwith and walked to the stairs. He did not look back at
her.

"Herein!" called somebody from within the white-painted door of the
Baron's room, when he knocked.

Herr Haase,