friend. A friend--what is that? I never
knew one!"

"Then be mine. Let me be your friend. You know my history. You know
about me and my work. I throw my secret into your hands. You will not
betray me? You warned me once, at Montreal. Will you not shield me once
again?"

She nodded, smiling now in an amused way. "Monsieur always takes the
most extraordinary times to visit me! Monsieur asks always the most
extraordinary things! Monsieur does always the most extraordinary acts!
He takes me to call upon a gentleman in a night robe! He calls upon me
himself, of an evening, in dinner dress of hides and beads--"

"'Tis the best I have, Madam!" I colored, but her eye had not
criticism, though her speech had mockery.

"This is the costume of your American savages," she said. "I find it
among the most beautiful I have ever seen. Only a man can wear it. You
wear it like a man. I like you in it--I have never liked you so well.
Betray you, Monsieur? Why should I? How could I?"

"That is true. Why should you? You are Helena von Ritz. One of her
breeding does not betray men or women. Neither does she make any
journeys of this sort without a purpose."

"I had a purpose, when I started. I changed it in mid-ocean. Now, I was
on my way to the Orient."

"And had forgotten your report to Mr. Pakenham?" I shook my head.
"Madam, you are the guest of England."

"I never denied that," she said. "I was that in Washington. I was so in
Montreal. But I have never given pledge which left me other than free to
go as I liked. I have studied, that is true--but I have _not_ reported."

"Have we not been fair with you, Baroness? Has my chief not proved
himself fair with you?"

"Yes," she nodded. "You have played the game fairly, that is true."

"Then you will play it fair with us? Come, I say you have still that
chance to win the gratitude of a people."

"I begin to understand you better, you Americans," she said
irrelevantly, as was sometimes her fancy. "See my bed yonder. It is that
couch of husks of which Monsieur told me! Here is the cabin of logs.
There is the fireplace. Here is Helena von Ritz--even as you told me
once before she sometime might be. And here on my wrists are the
imprints of your fingers! What does it mean, Monsieur? Am I not an apt
student? See, I made up that little bed with my own hands! I--Why, see,
I can cook! What you once said to me lingered in my mind. At first, it
was matter only of curiosity. Presently I bega