ve occurred," said Tiel drily.

When I recalled how long Eileen had been up in my room, I realised that
this was quite possible, but this did not, for some reason, soothe me.

"Why did he come?" I asked.

"The fleet is going out on Friday."

"Aha!" I exclaimed, forgetting my annoyance for the moment.

"So that is settled at last," said Tiel with a satisfied smile.

He happened to turn his smile on Eileen also, and my annoyance returned.

"You dismissed our dear friend Ashington very quickly when you heard me
coming," I remarked in no very amiable tone.

Tiel looked at me gravely.

"Belke," he said, "you might quite well have done serious mischief by
showing your dislike for Ashington so palpably the other day. Even a
man of that sort has feelings. I have soothed them, I am glad to say,
but he was not very anxious to meet you again."

"So much the better!" said I. "Traitors are not the usual company a
German officer keeps."

"Many of us have to mix with strange company nowadays, Mr Belke," said
Eileen.

Her sparkling eye and her grave smile disarmed me instantly. I felt
suddenly conscious I was not playing a very judicious part, or showing
myself perhaps to great advantage. So I bade them both good-night and
returned to my room.

But it was not to go to bed. For two mortal hours I paced my floor,
and thought and thought, but not about any problem of the war. I kept
hearing Tiel's "Well," spoken in that hatefully intimate way, and then
remembering that those two were alone--all night!--in the front part of
the house, far out of sound or reach of me. I did not doubt Eileen for
an instant, but that calm, cool, cosmopolitan adventurer, who could
knock an unsuspecting clergyman on the head and throw him over a cliff,
and then tell the story with a smile,--what was he not capable of?

Again and again I asked myself why it concerned me. This was a girl I
had only known for hours. But her smile was the last thing I saw
before I fell asleep at length about three o'clock in the morning.

VIII.

THE DECISION.

In the morning I came down to breakfast without asking anybody's leave,
and I looked at those two very hard. To see Eileen fresh and calm and
smiling gave me the most intense relief, while, as for Tiel, he looked
as cool and imperturbable as he always did--and I cannot put it
stronger than that, for nothing more cool and imperturbable than Tiel
ever breathed. In fact it could not have br