e to gain their
affection."

She had tried to disobey. To go to France!... where her pre-war work
was already known!... To go back to danger when she had already become
accustomed to the safe life of a neutral country!... But her attempts
at resistance were ineffectual. She lacked sufficient will-power; the
"service" had converted her into an automaton.

"And here I am, suspecting that probably I am going to my death, but
fulfilling the commissions given to me, struggling to be accommodating
and retard in this way the fulfillment of their vengeance.... I am like
a condemned criminal who knows that he is going to die, and tries to
make himself so necessary that his sentence will be delayed for a few
months."

"How did you get into France?" he demanded, paying no attention to her
doleful tones.

"Freya shrugged her shoulders. In her business a change of nationality
was easily accomplished. At present she was passing for a citizen of a
South American republic. The doctor had arranged all the papers
necessary to enable her to cross the frontier.

"But here," she continued, "my accomplices have me more securely than
as though I were in prison. They have given me the means of coming here
and they only can arrange my departure. I am absolutely in their power.
I wonder what they are going to do with me!..."

At certain times terror had suggested most desperate expedients to her.
She had thought of denouncing herself, of appearing before the French
authorities, telling them her story and acquainting them with the
secrets which she possessed. But her past filled her with terror, so
many were the evils which she had brought against this country. Perhaps
they might pardon her life, taking into account her voluntary action in
giving herself up. But the prison, the seclusion with shaved head,
dressed in some coarse serge frock, condemned to silence, perhaps
suffering hunger and cold, filled her with invincible repulsion.... No,
death before that!

And so she was continuing her life as a spy, shutting her eyes to the
future, living only in the present, trying to keep from thinking,
considering herself happy if she could see before her even a few days
of security.

The meeting with Ferragut in the street of Marseilles had revived her
drooping spirits, arousing new hope.

"Get me out of here; keep me with you. On your ship I could live as
forgotten by the world as though I were dead.... And if my presence
annoys you, take m