ew steps towards
her, like a cat creeping up to its prey, and suddenly, before Simon
could intervene, he leapt on the crupper behind her, passed his arms
under hers and dug his heels into the horse, which broke into a
gallop along the barricades, towards the north.

From the opposite direction, through the mist, appeared the sky-blue
uniforms of France.

CHAPTER VIII

THE HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR THE NEW TERRITORIES

"My fault! . . . Now aren't you convinced, as I am, that this is a
ramification of my fault, ending in a _cul-de-sac_? So that all the
eruptive forces immobilized in the direction of this blind alley have
found a favourable position . . . so that all these forces . . . you
grasp the idea, don't you?"

Simon grasped it all the less inasmuch as Old Sandstone was becoming
more and more entangled in his theory, while he, Simon, was wholly
absorbed in Isabel and had ears for hardly anything but what she was
telling him.

They were all three a little way outside the barricades, among the
groups of tents around which the soldiers, in overalls, and
fatigue-caps, were moving to and fro and preparing their meals.
Isabel's face was already more peaceful and her eyes less uneasy.
Simon gazed at her with infinite tenderness. In the course of the
morning the fog had at last dispersed. For the first time since the
day when they had travelled together on the deck of the _Queen Mary_,
the sun shone in a cloudless sky; and one might almost have thought
that nothing had occurred between that day and this to divide them.
All evil memories faded away. Isabel's torn dress, her pallor and her
bruised wrists were the reminder merely of an adventure already
remote, since the glorious future was opening out before them.

Inside the barricades, a few soldiers scurried round the arena,
stacking the dead bodies, while others, farther back, stationed on the
wreck of the _Ville de Dunkerque_, removed the sinister shapes hanging
from their gibbets. Near the submarine, in an enclosed space guarded
by many sentries, some dozens of prisoners were herded and were joined
at every moment by fresh batches of captives.

"Of course," resumed Old Sandstone, "there are many other obscure
points; but I shall not leave this until I have studied all the causes
of the phenomenon."

"And I," said Simon, laughing, "should very much like to know how you
managed to get here."

This was a question which possessed little interest for Old Sa