careful, particularly when the local government is affected.
Fourth--France will have to choose between consuming a week in getting
another letter from Paris to Washington, or she will have to chance the
cable with the risk of America learning her message."

"What do you think France will do?" Marston asked.

"If the letter concerned my mission, she will risk the cable," Mrs.
Spencer replied. "She would far rather disclose the affair to the United
States, than to let Germany succeed."

"May she not be content now to warn the United States?" suggested
Marston.

"It's quite possible. All depends whether the letter concerns my
mission. We have been informed by the Wilhelm-strasse that it probably
does, and directed to prevent its delivery to the French Ambassador.
We've succeeded in preventing, but bungled it over to the United
States--the one country that we shouldn't have aroused. What in the
devil's name ails your assistants, Marston--particularly Crenshaw?"

"To be quite candid," Marston replied, "he had a grouch; he thought that
Sparrow and I flub-dubbed the matter of the cab, and deliberately tried
to lose him when we went to the Collingwood. And when he did come, he
drew his gun on us until he understood."

"What?" she exclaimed.

"He thought that it was a scheme of Sparrow to injure him in your eyes.
It seems that he and Sparrow are jealous of your beautiful eyes."

"What are you talking about?" she demanded. "What have I, or my
beautiful eyes, to do with Crenshaw and Sparrow?"

"What usually happens to the men who are associated with you in any
enterprise: they get daffy over you."

"Because they get daffy over me is no excuse for stupid execution of the
business in hand," she shrugged. "_You_ never have been guilty of
stupidity, Marston."

"Because I've managed never to be a fool about you--however much I have
been tempted to become one."

"Have been, Marston?" she inflected.

"Have been--and _am_," he bowed. "I'm not different from the
rest--only--"

She curled herself on a divan, and languidly stretched her slender
rounded arms behind the raven hair.

"Only what, Marston?" she murmured.

"Only I know when the game is beyond me."

"So, to you, I'm a game?"

"Of an impossible sort," he replied. "I admire at a distance--and keep
my head."

"And your heart, too, _mon ami_?"

"My heart is the servant of my head. When it ceases so to be, I shall
ask to be detached from the Paris station."