ightened her shoulders; her head drooped; she covered her face
with clasped hands.

Standing there, did she remember those who, one by one, had betrayed
her? Those who first whispered to her that love of country was a
narrow creed; those who taught her to abhor violence, and then failed
at the test--Bazard, firing to kill, going down to death under the
merciless lance of an Uhlan; Buckhurst, guilty of every crime that
attracted him; and now Sylvia, her friend, false to the salt she had
eaten, false to the roof above her, false, utterly false to all save
the land of her nativity.

And she, Eline de Trecourt, a soldier's daughter and a Frenchwoman,
had been used as a shield by those who were striking her own
mother-land--the country she once had denied; the country whose
frontiers she knew not in her zeal for limitless brotherhood; the
blackened, wasted country she had seen at Strasbourg; the land for
which the cuirassiers of Morsbronn had died!

"What have I done?" she cried, brokenly--"what have I done that this
shame should come upon me?"

"You have done nothing," I said, "neither for good nor evil in this
crisis. But Sylvia has; Sylvia the spy. That a man should give up his
life for a friend is good; that a woman offer hers for her country is
better. What has it cost her? The friendship of the woman she
worships--you, madame! It has cost her that already, and the price may
include her life and the life of the man she loves. She has done her
duty; the sacrifice is still burning; I pray it may spare her and
spare him."

I walked to the door and laid my hand on the brass knob.

"The world is merciless to failures," I said. "Yet even a successful
spy is scarcely tolerated among the Philistines; a captured spy is a
horror for friends to forget and for enemies to destroy in righteous
indignation. Madame, I know, for I have served your country in Algiers
as a spy,... not from patriotism, for I am an alien, but because I was
fitted for it in my line of duty. Had I been caught I should have
looked for nothing but contempt from France; from the Kabyle, for
neither admiration nor mercy. I tell you this that you may understand
my respect for this woman, whose motives are worthy of it."

The Countess looked at me scornfully. "It is well," she said, "for
those who understand and tolerate treachery to condone it. It is well
that the accused be judged by their peers. We of Trecourt know only
one tongue. But that is the langu