e world."

"I am not sure that it is an equal bargain, though, which you seek to
drive with us," she said. "Germany aims, of course, at world power, but
you are still fettered by the terms of that Treaty. You cannot build a
great fleet of warships or aeroplanes; you cannot train great armies; you
cannot lay up for yourselves all the store that is necessary for a
successful war. So you bring your brains to Russia, and you ask us to do
these things; but Russia does not aim at world power. Russia seeks only
for a great era of self-development. She, too, has a mighty neighbour
at her gates. I am not sure that your bargain is a fair one."

"It is the first time that I have heard you talk like this," Immelan
declared, with a little tremor in his tone.

"I have been in England twice during the last few months," Naida said.
"You know very well at whose wish I came, I have been studying the
conditions here, studying the people so far as I can. I find them such a
kindly race. I find their present Government so unsuspicious, so
genuinely altruistic. After all, that Treaty belongs to an England that
has passed. The England of to-day would never go to war at all. They
believe here that they have solved the problem of perpetual peace."

Immelan smiled a little bitterly.

"Dear lady," he said, "if I lose your help, if you go back to Petrograd
and talk to Paul Matinsky as you are talking to me, do you know that you
will break the heart of a nation?"

She shook her head.

"Paul does not look upon me as infallible," she protested. "Besides,
there are other considerations. And now, please, we will talk of the
tennis. I do not know whether it is my fancy, but that man there to your
left, in grey, seems to me to be taking an interest in our conversation.
He cannot possibly overhear, and he has not glanced once in our
direction, yet I have an instinct for these things."

Immelan glanced in the direction of the stranger,--a quiet-looking,
spare man dressed in a grey tweed suit, clean-shaven and of early
middle-age. There was nothing about his appearance to distinguish him
from a score or more of other loiterers.

"You are quite right," her companion admitted. "One should not talk of
these things even where the birds may listen, but it is so difficult. As
for that man, he could not possibly hear, but there might be others. One
passes behind on the grass so noiselessly."

They relapsed into silence. Naida, leaning a little forward, b