could see as well as hear the gray column of steel rolling past below
them.

The spies knew that the gray column had reached Claye, had stood within
fifteen miles of Paris, and then upon Paris had turned its back. They
knew also that the reverberations from the direction of Meaux, that each
moment grew more loud and savage, were the French "seventy-fives"
whipping the gray column forward. Of what they felt the Germans did not
speak. In silence they looked at each other, and in the eyes of Marie
was bitterness and resolve.

Toward noon Marie met Anfossi in the great drawing-room that stretched
the length of the terrace and from the windows of which, through the
park gates, they could see the Paris road.

"This, that is passing now," said Marie, "is the last of our rear-guard.
Go to your tower," she ordered, "and send word that except for
stragglers and the wounded our column has just passed through
Neufchelles, and that any moment we expect the French." She raised her
hand impressively. "From now," she warned, "we speak French, we think
French, we _are_ French!"

Anfossi, or Briand, as now he called himself, addressed her in that
language. His tone was bitter. "Pardon my lese-majesty," he said, "but
this chief of your Intelligence Department is a _dummer Mensch_. He is
throwing away a valuable life."

Marie exclaimed in dismay. She placed her hand upon his arm, and the
violet eyes filled with concern.

"Not yours!" she protested.

"Absolutely!" returned the Italian. "I can send nothing by this knapsack
wireless that they will not learn from others; from airmen, Uhlans, the
peasants in the fields. And certainly I will be caught. Dead I am dead,
but alive and in Paris the opportunities are unending. From the French
Legion Etranger I have my honorable discharge. I am an expert wireless
operator and in their Signal Corps I can easily find a place. Imagine
me, then, on the Eiffel Tower. From the air I snatch news from all of
France, from the Channel, the North Sea. You and I could work together,
as in Rome. But here, between the lines, with a pass from a village
_sous prefet_, it is ridiculous. I am not afraid to die. But to die
because some one else is stupid, that is hard."

Marie clasped his hand in both of hers.

"You must not speak of death," she cried; "you know I must carry out my
orders, that I must force you to take this risk. And you know that
thought of harm to you tortures me!"

Quickly the young ma