f to be, as she puts it, a woman of
"surprising virtue," and I am by no means sure that she is not right.
For the doing of her bit has led her into situations from which
nothing but the coolest of hearts and the quickest of wits could have
brought her out untarnished. She has played her part gallantly,
serenely, in the service of the Alliance; I should be a poor creature
if I judged her by British provincial standards. Among other stories
she told me the tale which I will repeat to the reader. Here and there
were gaps which I have sought diligently to fill up until the whole
has been made complete. Madame Gilbert told to me the most intimate
details without a blush, and if in my telling I startle the blood to
the cheek of the very oldest of readers, the fault will rest with me.

* * * * *

"I have a notion, Madame Gilbert, which I should like you to follow
up," said Dawson. He was at that time (the Spring of 1915) in his
office in London--he had not yet been despatched on his spacious
pilgrimage to the northern shipyards--and Madame Gilbert sat opposite
to him in an attitude deliberately provocative. She sat back in a
comfortable chair facing the light, her legs were crossed, and she
displayed a great deal more of beautifully rounded calf and perfectly
fitting silk stockings than is usual even in the best society.
Although she did not look at Dawson, she was fully conscious of the
frowning glare which he threw at the audacious leg.

"Please give me your attention--if you can. I have been out at the
Front lately, at General Headquarters, to advise upon the means of
stopping the flow of information from our lines to the enemy. All the
obvious channels have been stopped--the telephones hidden in French
cellars, the signals given by the hands of clocks, the German spies
dressed in uniforms stripped from our dead, and so on. Lots of them,
all obvious and simple. One can deal with that sort of thing by a
careful system of unremitting watchfulness. We must have caught up
with most of the arrangements made by the Germans before the war, but
they still get much more information than is good for them to have,
and for us to lose. I am convinced--and G.H.Q. agrees--that there are
many officers, especially in the French and Belgian armies, who were
planted there years before the war for the precise purpose to which
they are now put. Even in our own Army, which is expanding so rapidly,
the same thing