s country. Now, they
mean to force her out, or perhaps kill her! Good God! Garry, did you
ever hear of such filthy impudence as this entire German propaganda in
America?"

"Go and get her trunks," said Barres, deeply worried. "By the time you
fetch 'em back here, lunch will be ready. Afterward, we'd all better
get together and talk over this unpleasant situation."

Westmore glanced at his watch, turned and went swinging away in his
quick, energetic stride. Barres walked slowly back to the studio.

There was nobody there. Thessalie had not yet returned from her visit
to Dulcie Soane.

The Prophet, however, came in presently, his tail politely hoisted. An
agreeable aroma from the kitchen had doubtless allured him; he made an
amicable remark to Barres, suffered himself to be caressed, then
sprang to the carved table--his favourite vantage point for
observation--and gazed solemnly toward the dining-room.

For half an hour or more, Barres fussed and pottered about in the
rather aimless manner of all artists, shifting canvases and stacking
them against the wall, twirling his wax Arethusa around to inspect her
from every possible and impossible angle, using clouds of fixitive on
such charcoal studies as required it, scraping away meditatively at a
too long neglected palette.

He was already frankly concerned about Thessalie, and the more he
considered her situation the keener grew his apprehension.

Yet he, like all his fellow Americans, had not yet actually persuaded
himself to believe in spies.

Of course he read about them and their machinations in the daily
papers; the spy scare was already well developed in New York; yet, to
him and to the great majority of his fellow countrymen, people who
made a profession of such a dramatic business seemed unreal--abstract
types, not concrete examples of the human race--and he could not
believe in them--could neither visualise such people nor realise that
they existed outside melodrama or the covers of a best-seller.

There is an incredulity which knows yet refuses to believe in its own
knowledge. It is very American and it represented the paradoxical
state of mind of this deeply worried young man, as he stood there in
the studio, scraping away mechanically at his crusted palette.

Then, as he turned to lay it aside, through the open studio door he
saw a strange, bespectacled man looking in at him intently.

An unpleasant shock passed through him, and his instinct started