e spirit of adventure that had exiled her from
the Berlin hospitals carried her with the blue-prints to the German
embassy. There, greatly shocked, they first wrote down her name and
address, and then, indignant at her proposition, ordered her out. But
the day following a strange young German who was not at all indignant,
but, on the contrary, quite charming, called upon Marie. For the
blue-prints he offered her a very large sum, and that same hour with
them and Marie departed for Berlin. Marie did not need the money. Nor
did the argument that she was serving her country greatly impress her.
It was rather that she loved intrigue. And so she became a spy.

Henri Ravignac, the man she had robbed of the blue-prints, was tried by
court martial. The charge was treason, but Charles Ravignac, his
younger brother, promised to prove that the guilty one was the girl, and
to that end obtained leave of absence and spent much time and money. At
the trial he was able to show the record of Marie in Berlin and Monte
Carlo; that she was the daughter of a German secret agent; that on the
afternoon the prints disappeared Marie, with an agent of the German
embassy, had left Paris for Berlin. In consequence of this the charge of
selling military secrets was altered to one of "gross neglect," and
Henri Ravignac was sentenced to two years in the military prison at
Tours. But he was of an ancient and noble family, and when they came to
take him from his cell in the Cherche-Midi, he was dead. Charles, his
brother, disappeared. It was said he also had killed himself; that he
had been appointed a military attache in South America; that to revenge
his brother he had entered the secret service; but whatever became of
him no one knew. All that was certain was that, thanks to the act of
Marie Gessler, on the rolls of the French army the ancient and noble
name of Ravignac no longer appeared.

In her chosen profession Marie Gessler found nothing discreditable. Of
herself her opinion was not high, and her opinion of men was lower. For
her smiles she had watched several sacrifice honor, duty, loyalty; and
she held them and their kind in contempt. To lie, to cajole, to rob men
of secrets they thought important, and of secrets the importance of
which they did not even guess, was to her merely an intricate and
exciting game.

She played it very well. So well that in the service her advance was
rapid. On important missions she was sent to Russia, through t