own beside her in
his old place. She lighted a cigarette for him.

"Tell me about poor old Jack," he said in a low voice.

Their dinner was a pleasant but subdued affair. Afterward she played
for him--interrupted once by a telephone call from Ilse, who said that
John's temperature had risen a degree and the only thing to do was to
watch him every second. But she refused Palla's offer to join her at
the hospital, saying that she and the night nurse were sufficient; and
the girl went slowly back to the piano.

But, somehow, even that seemed too far away from her lover--or the man
who once had been her avowed lover. And after idling-with the keys for
a few minutes she came back to the lounge where he was seated.

He looked up from his revery: "This is most comfortable, Palla," he
said with a slight smile.

"Do you like it?"

"Of course."

"You need not go away at all--if it pleases you." Her voice was so
indistinct that for a moment he did not comprehend what she had said.
Then he turned and looked at her. Both were pale enough now.

"That is what--what I was going to tell you," she said. "Is it too
late?"

"Too late!"

"To say that I am--in love with you."

He flushed heavily and looked at her in a dazed way.

"What do you mean?" he said.

"I mean--if you want me--I am--am not afraid any more----"

They had both risen instinctively, as though to face something vital.
She said:

"Don't ask me to submit to any degrading ceremony.... I love you
enough."

He said slowly: "Do you realise what you say? You are crazy! You and
your socialist friends pretend to be fighting anarchy. You preach
against Bolshevism! You warn the world that the Crimson Tide is
rising. And every word you utter swells it! _You_ are the anarchists
yourselves! You are the Bolsheviki of the world! You come bringing
disorder where there is order; you substitute unproven theory for
proven practice!

"Like the hun, you come to impose your will on a world already content
with its own God and its own belief! And that is autocracy; and
autocracy is what you say you oppose!

"I tell you and your friends that it was not wolves that were
pupped in the sand of the shaggy Prussian forests when the first
Hohenzollern was dropped. It was swine! Swine were farrowed;--not
even _sanglier_, but decadent domestic swine;--when Wilhelm and his
degenerate litter came out to root up Europe! And _they_ were the
first real Bolsheviki!"

He turned and be