?" he asked, with a sardonic
inflection of his deep voice that made me guess Yossof had told him what
passed at our interview.

"Why, no; I can't say that he did that," I confessed. Already I realized
that I had learned absolutely nothing from the Jew save the new
password, and the fact that he was, or soon would be, in direct
communication with Anne.

Mishka gave an approving grunt.

"There are some who might learn discretion from Yossof," he remarked
sententiously.

"Just so. But who is he, anyhow? He might be 'the wandering Jew'
himself, from the mysterious way he seems to get around the world."

"Who and what he is? That I cannot tell you, for I do not know, or seek
to know, since it is no business of mine. I go to bed; for we must start
betimes in the morning."

Not another word did he speak, beyond a surly "good night;" but, though
I followed his example and got into bed, with my revolver laid handily
on the bolster as he had placed his, hours passed before sleep came to
me. I lay listening to Mishka's snores,--he was a noisy sleeper,--and
thinking of Anne; thinking of that one blissful month in London when I
saw her nearly every day.

How vividly I remembered our first meeting, less than five months back,
though the events of a lifetime seemed to have occurred since then. It
was the evening of my return from South Africa; and I went, of course,
to dine at Chelsea, feeling only a mild curiosity to see this old
school-fellow of Mary's, whose praises she sang so enthusiastically.

"She was always the prettiest and smartest girl in the school, but now
she's just the loveliest creature you ever saw," Mary had declared; and
though I wasn't rude enough to say so, I guessed I was not likely to
endorse that verdict.

But when I saw Anne my scepticism vanished. I think I loved her from
that first moment, when she came sweeping into Mary's drawing-room in a
gown of some gauzy brown stuff, almost the color of her glorious hair,
with a bunch of white lilies at her bosom. She greeted me with a frank
friendliness that was much more like an American than an English girl;
indeed, even then, I never thought of her as English. She was, as her
father had told his friend Treherne he meant her to be, "cosmopolitan to
her finger-tips." She even spoke English with a curious precision and
deliberation, as one speaks a language one knows perfectly, but does not
use familiarly. She once confided to me that she always "thought" e