Part 12

"You're such a dear," she murmured. "But you talk like a boy. What do you really know about me? We have met just three times in our entire lives. Do any of those encounters really enlighten you? If you were a business man in a responsible position, could you honestly vouch for me?"

"Don't you credit me with common sense?" he insisted warmly.

She laughed:

"No, Garry, dear, not with very much. Even I have more than you, and that is saying very little. We are inclined to be irresponsible, you and I--inclined to take the world lightly, inclined to laugh, inclined to tread the moonlit way! No, Garry, neither you nor I possess very much of that worldly caution born of hardened wisdom and sharpened wits."

She smiled almost tenderly at him and pressed his hands between her own.

"If I had been worldly wise," she said, "I should never have danced my way to America through summer moonlight with you. If I had been wiser still, I should not now be an exile, my political guilt established, myself marked for destruction by a great European Power the instant I dare set foot on its soil."

"I supposed your trouble to be political," he nodded.

"Yes, it is." She sighed, looked at him with a weary little smile. "But, Garry, I am not guilty of being what that nation believes me to be."

"I am very sure of it," he said gravely.

"Yes, you would be. You'd believe in me anyway, even with the terrible evidence against me.... I don't suppose you'd think me guilty if I tell you that I am not--in spite of what they might say about me--might prove, apparently."

She withdrew her hands, clasped them, her gaze lost in retrospection for a few moments. Then, coming to herself with a gesture of infinite weariness:

"There is no use, Garry. I should never be believed. There are those who, base enough to entrap me, now are preparing to destroy me because they are cowardly enough to be afraid of me while I am alive. Yes, trapped, exiled, utterly discredited as I am to-day, they are still afraid of me."

"Who are you, Thessa?" he asked, deeply disturbed.

"I am what you first saw me--a dancer, Garry, and nothing worse."

"It seems strange that a European Government should desire your destruction," he said.

"If I really were what this Government believes me to be, it would not seem strange to you."

She sat thinking, worrying her under lip with delicate white teeth; then:

"Garry, do you believe that your country is going to be drawn into this war?"

"I don't know what to think," he said bitterly. "The _Lusitania_ ought to have meant war between us and Germany. Every brutal Teutonic disregard of decency since then ought to have meant war--every unarmed ship sunk by their U-boats, every outrage in America perpetrated by their spies and agents ought to have meant war. I don't know how much more this Administration will force us to endure--what further flagrant insult Germany means to offer. They've answered the President's last note by canning Von Tirpitz and promising, conditionally, to sink no more unarmed ships without warning. But they all are liars, the Huns. So that's the way matters stand, Thessa, and I haven't the slightest idea of what is going to happen to my humiliated country."

"Why does not your country prepare?" she asked.

"God knows why. Washington doesn't believe in it, I suppose."

"You should build ships," she said. "You should prepare plans for calling out your young men."

He nodded indifferently:

"There was a preparedness parade. I marched in it. But it only irritated Washington. Now, finally, the latest Mexican insult is penetrating official stupidity, and we are mobilising our State Guardsmen for service on the border. And that's about all we are doing. We are making neither guns nor rifles; we are building no ships; the increase in our regular army is of little account; some of the most vital of the great national departments are presided over by rogues, clowns, and fools--pacifists all!--stupid, dull, grotesque and impotent. And you ask me what my country is going to do. And I tell you that I don't know. For real Americans, Thessa, these last two years have been years of shame. For we should have armed and mobilised when the first rifle-shot cracked across the Belgian frontier at Longwy; and we should have declared war when the first Hun set his filthy hoof on Belgian soil.

"In our hearts we real Americans know it. But we had no leader--nobody of faith, conviction, vision, action, to do what was the only thing to do. No; we had only talkers to face the supreme crisis of the world--only the shallow noise of words was heard in answer to God's own summons warning all mankind that hell's deluge was at hand."

The intense bitterness of what he said had made her very grave. She listened silently, intent on his every expression. And when he ended with a gesture of hopelessness and disgust, she sat gazing at him out of her lovely dark eyes, deep in reflection.

"Garry," she said at length, "do you know anything about the European systems of intelligence?"

"No--only what I read in novels."

"Do you know that America, to-day, is fairly crawling with German spies?"

"I suppose there are some here."

"There are a hundred thousand paid German spies within an hour's journey of this city."

He looked up incredulously.

"Let me tell you," she said, "how it is arranged here. The German Ambassador is the master spy in America. Under his immediate supervision are the so-called diplomatic agents--the personnel of the embassy and members of the consular service. These people do not class themselves as agents or as spies; they are the directors of spies and agents.

"Agents gather information from spies who perform the direct work of investigating. Spies usually work alone and report, through local agents, to consular or diplomatic agents. And these, in turn, report to the Ambassador, who reports to Berlin.

"It is all directed from Berlin. The personal source of all German espionage is the Kaiser. He is the supreme master spy."

"Where have you learned these things, Thessa?" he asked in a troubled voice.

"I have learned, Garry."

"Are you--a spy?"

"No."

"Have you been?"

"No, Garry."

"Then how----"

"Don't ask me; just listen. There are men here in your city who are here for no good purpose. I do not mean to say that merely because they seek also to injure me--destroy me, perhaps,--God knows what they wish to do to me!--but I say it because I believe that your country will declare war on Germany some day very soon. And that you ought to watch these spies who move everywhere among you!

"Germany also believes that war is near. And this is why she strives to embroil your country with Japan and Mexico. That is why she discredits you with Holland, with Sweden. It is why she instructs her spies here to set fires in factories and on ships, blow up powder mills and great industrial plants which are manufacturing munitions for the Allies of the Triple Entente.

"America may doubt that there is to be war between her and Germany, but Germany does not doubt it.

"Let me tell you what else Germany is doing. She is spreading insidious propaganda through a million disloyal Germans and pacifist Americans, striving to poison the minds of your people against England. She secretly buys, owns, controls newspapers which are used as vehicles for that propaganda.

"She is debauching the Irish here who are discontented with England's rule; she spends vast sums of money in teaching treachery in your schools, in arousing suspicion among farmers, in subsidising mercantile firms.

"Garry, I tell you that a Hun is always a Hun; a Boche is always a Boche, call him what else you will.

"The Germans are the monkeys of the world; they have imitated the human race. But, Garry, they are still what they always have been at heart, barbarians who have no business in Europe.

"In their hearts--and for all their priests and clergymen and cathedrals and churches--they still believe in their old gods which they themselves created--fierce, bestial supermen, more cruel, more powerful, more treacherous, more beastly than they themselves.

"That is the German. That is the Hun under all his disguises. No white man can meet him on his own ground; no white man can understand him, appeal to anything in common between himself and the Boche. He is brutal and contemptuous to women; he is tyrannical to the weak, cringing to the strong, fundamentally bestial, utterly selfish, intolerant of any civilisation which is not his conception of civilisation--his monkey-like conception of Christ--whom, in his pagan soul, he secretly sneers at--not always secretly, now!"

She straightened up with a quick little gesture of contempt. Her face was brightly flushed; her eyes brilliant with scorn.

"Garry, has not America heard enough of 'the good German,' the 'kindly Teuton,' the harmless, sentimental and 'excellent citizen,' whose morally edifying origin as a model emigrant came out of his own sly mouth, and who has, by his own propaganda alone, become an accepted type of good-natured thrift and erudition in your Republic?

"Let me say to you what a French girl thinks! A hundred years ago you were a very small nation, but you were homogeneous and the average of culture was far higher in America then than it is at present. For now, your people's cultivation and civilisation is diluted by the ignorance of millions of foreigners to whom you have given hospitality. And, of these, the Germans have done you the most deadly injury, vulgarising public taste in art and literature, affronting your clean, sane intelligence by the new decadence and perversion in music, in painting, in illustration, in fiction.

"Whatever the normal Hun touches he vulgarises; whatever the decadent Boche touches he soils and degrades and transforms into a horrible abomination. This he has done under your eyes in art, in literature, in architecture, in modern German music.

"His filthy touch is even on your domestic life--this Barbarian who feeds grossly, whose personal habits are a by-word among civilised and cultured people, whose raw ferocity is being now revealed to the world day by day in Europe, whose proverbial clumsiness and stupidity have long furnished your stage with its oafs and clowns.

"This is the thing that is now also invading you with thousands of spies, betraying you with millions of traitors, and which will one day turn on you and tear you and trample you like an enraged hog, unless you and your people awake to what is passing in the world you live in!"

She was on her feet now, flushed, lovely, superb in her deep and controlled excitement.

"I'll tell you this much," she said. "It is Germany that wishes my destruction. Germany trapped me; Germany would have destroyed me in the trap had I not escaped. Now, Germany is afraid of me, knowing what I know. And her agents follow me, spy on me, thwart me, prevent me from earning my living, until I--I can scarcely endure it--this hounding and persecution----" Her voice broke; she waited to control it:

"I am not a spy. I never was one. I never betrayed a human soul--no, nor any living thing that ever trusted me! These people who hound me know that I am not guilty of that for which another Government is ready to try me--and condemn me. They fear that I shall prove to this other Government my innocence. I can't. But they fear I can. And the Hun is afraid of me. Because, if I ever proved my innocence, it would involve the arrest and trial and certain execution of men high in rank in the capital of this other country. So--the Hun dogs me everywhere I go. I do not know why he does not try to kill me. Possibly he lacks courage, so far. Possibly he has not had any good opportunity, because I am very careful, Garry."

"But this--this is outrageous!" broke out Barres. "You can't stand this sort of thing, Thessa! It's a matter for the police----"

"Don't interfere!"

"But----"

"Don't interfere! The last thing I want is publicity. The last thing I wish for is that your city, state, or national government should notice me at all or have any curiosity concerning me or any idea of investigating my affairs."

"Why?"

"Because, although as soon as your country is at war with Germany, my danger from Germany ceases, on the other hand another very deadly danger begins at once to threaten me."

"What danger?"

"It will come from a country with which your country will be allied. And I shall be arrested here as a _German_ spy, and I shall be sent back to the country which I am supposed to have betrayed. And there nothing in the world could save me."

"You mean--court-martial?"

"A brief one, Garry. And then the end."

"Death?"

She nodded.

After a few moments she moved toward the door. He went with her, picking up his hat.

"I can't let you go with me," she said with a faint smile.

"Why not?"

"You are involved sufficiently already."

"What do I care for----"

"Hush, Garry. Do you wish to displease me?"

"No, but I----"

"Please! Call me a taxicab. I wish to go back alone."

In spite of argument she remained smilingly firm. Finally he rang up a taxi for her. When it signalled he walked down stairs, through the dim hall and out to the grilled gateway beside her.

"Good-bye," she said, giving her hand. He detained it:

"I can't bear to have you go alone----"

"I'm perfectly safe, mon ami. I've had a delightful time at your party--really I have. This affair of the letter does not spoil it. I'm accustomed to similar episodes. So now, good-night."

"Am I to see you again soon?"

"Soon? Ah, I can't tell you that, Garry."

"When it is convenient then?"

"Yes."

"And will you telephone me on your safe arrival home to-night?"

She laughed:

"If you wish. You're so sweet to me, Garry. You always have been. Don't worry about me. I am not in the least apprehensive. You see I'm rather a clever girl, and I know something about the Boche."

"You had your letter stolen."

"Only half of it!" she retorted gaily. "She is a gallant little thing, your friend Dulcie. Please give her my love. As for your other friends, they were amusing.... Mr. Mandel spoke to me about an engagement."

"Why don't you consider it? Corot Mandel is the most important producer in New York."

"Is he, really? Well, if I'm not interfered with perhaps I shall go to call on Mr. Mandel." She began to laugh mischievously to herself: "There was one man there who never gave me a moment's peace until I promised to lunch with him at the Ritz."

"Who the devil----"

"Mr. Westmore," she said demurely.

"Oh, Jim Westmore! Well, Thessa, he's a corker. He's really a splendid fellow, but look out for him! He's also a philanderer."

"Oh, dear. I thought he was just a sculptor and a rather strenuous young man."

"I wasn't knocking him," said Barres, laughing, "but he falls in love with every pretty woman he meets. I'm merely warning you."

"Thank you, Garry," she smiled. She gave him her hand again, pulled the rose-coloured cloak around her bare shoulders, ran across the sidewalk to the taxi, and whispered to the driver.

"You'll telephone me when you get home?" he reminded her, baffled but smiling.

She laughed and nodded. The cab wheeled out into the street, backed, turned, and sped away eastward.

* * * * *

Half an hour later his telephone rang:

"Garry, dear?"

"Is it you, Thessa?"

"Yes. I'm going to bed.... Tell Mr. Westmore that I'm not at all sure I shall meet him at the Ritz on Monday."

"He'll go, anyway."

"Will he? What devotion. What faith in woman! What a lively capacity for hope eternal! What vanity! Well, then, tell him he may take his chances."

"I'll tell him. But I think you might make a date with me, too, you little fraud!"

"Maybe I will. Maybe I'll drop in to see you unexpectedly some morning. And don't let me catch _you_ philandering in your studio with some pretty woman!"

"No fear, Thessa."

"I'm not at all sure. And your little model, Dulcie, is dangerously attractive."

"Piffle! She's a kid!"

"Don't be too sure of that, either! And tell Mr. Westmore that I _may_ keep my engagement. And then again I may not! Good-night, Garry, dear!"

"Good-night!"

* * * * *

Walking slowly back to extinguish the lights in the studio before retiring to his own room for the night, Barres noticed a piece of paper on the table under the lamp, evidently a fragment from the torn letter.

The words "Ferez Bey" and "Murtagh" caught his eye before he realised that it was not his business to decipher the fragment.

So he lighted a match, held the shred of letter paper to the flame, and let it burn between his fingers until only a blackened cinder fell to the floor.

But the two names were irrevocably impressed on his mind, and he found himself wondering who these men might be, as he stood by his bed, undressing.

XIV

PROBLEMS

The weather was turning hot in New York, and by the middle of the week the city sweltered.

Barres, dropping his brushes and laying aside a dozen pictures in all stages of incompletion; and being, otherwise, deeply bitten by the dangerously enchanting art of Manship--dangerous as inspiration but enchanting to gaze upon--was very busy making out of wax a diminutive figure of the running Arethusa.

And Dulcie, poor child, what with being poised on the ball of one little foot and with the other leg slung up in a padded loop, almost perished. Perspiration spangled her body like dew powdering a rose; sweat glistened on the features and shoulder-bared arms of the impassioned sculptor, even blinding him at times; but he worked on in a sort of furious exaltation, reeking of ill-smelling wax. And Dulcie, perfectly willing to die at her post, thought she was going to, and finally fainted away with an alarming thud.

Which brought Barres to his senses, even before she had recovered hers; and he proclaimed a vacation for his overworked Muse and his model, too.

"Do you feel better, Sweetness?" he enquired, as she opened her eyes when Selinda exchanged a wet compress for an ice-bag.

Dulcie, flat on the lounge, swathed in a crash bathrobe, replied only by a slight but reassuring flutter of one hand.

Esme Trenor sauntered in for a gossip, wearing his celebrated lilac-velvet jacket and Louis XV slippers.

"Oh, the devil," he drawled, looking from Dulcie to the Arethusa; "she's worth more than your amateurish statuette, Garry."

"You bet she is. And here's where her vacation begins."

Esme turned to Dulcie, lifting his eyebrows:

"You go away with him?"

The idea had never before entered Barres's head. But he said:

"Certainly; we both need the country for a few weeks."

"You'll go to one of those damned artists' colonies, I suppose," remarked Esme; "otherwise, washed and unwashed would expel shrill cries."

"Probably not in my own home," returned Barres, coolly. "I shall write my family about it to-day."

Corot Mandel dropped in, also, that morning--he and Esme were ever prowling uneasily around Dulcie in these days--and he studied the Arethusa through a foggy monocle, and he loitered about Dulcie's couch.

"You know," he said to Barres, "there's nothing like dancing to recuperate from all this metropolitan pandemonium. If you like, I can let Dulcie in on that thing I'm putting on at Northbrook."

"That's up to her," said Barres. "It's her vacation, and she can do what she likes with it----"

Esme interposed with characteristic impudence:

"Barres imitates Manship with impunity; I'd like to have a plagiaristic try at Sorolla and Zuloaga, if Dulcie says the word. Very agreeable job for a girl in hot weather," he added, looking at Dulcie, "--an easy swimming pose in some nice cool little Adirondack lake----"

"Seriously," interrupted Mandel, twirling his monocle impatiently by its greasy string, "I mean it, Barres." He turned and looked at the lithely speeding Arethusa. "If that is Dulcie, I can give her a good part in----"

"You hear, Dulcie?" enquired Barres. "These two kind gentlemen have what they consider attractive jobs for you. All I can offer you is liberty to tumble around the hayfields at Foreland Farms, with my sketching easel in the middle distance. Now, choose your job, Sweetness."

"The hayfields and----"

Dulcie's voice faded to a whisper; Barres, seated beside her, leaned nearer, bending his head to listen.

"And _you_," she murmured again, "--if you want me."

"I always want you," he whispered laughingly, in return.

Esme regarded the scene with weariness and chagrin.

"Come on," he said languidly to Mandel, "we'll buy her some flowers for the evil she does us. She'll need 'em; she'll be finished before this amateur sculptor finishes his blooming Arethusa."

Mandel lingered:

"I'm going up to Northbrook in a day or two, Barres. If you change--change Dulcie's mind for her, just call me up at the Adolf Gerhardt's."

"Dulcie will call you up if she changes my mind."

Dulcie laughed.

When they had gone, Barres said:

"You know I haven't thought about the summer. What was your idea about it?"

"My--idea?"

"Yes. You'd want a couple of weeks in the country somewhere, wouldn't you?"

"I don't know. I never went away," she replied vaguely.

It occurred to him, now, that for all his pleasant toleration of Soane's little daughter during the two years and more of his residence in Dragon Court, he had never really interested himself in her well-being, never thought to enquire about anything which might really concern her. He had taken it for granted that most people have some change from the stifling, grinding, endless routine of their lives--some respite, some quiet interval for recovery and rest.

And so, returning from his own vacations, it never occurred to him that the shy girl whom he permitted within his precincts, when convenient, never knew any other break in the grey monotony--never left the dusty, soiled, and superheated city from one year's summer to another.

Now, for the first time, he realised it.

"We'll go up there," he said. "My family is accustomed to models I bring there for my summer work. You'll be very comfortable, and you'll feel quite at home. We live very simply at Foreland Farms. Everybody will be kind and nobody will bother you, and you can do exactly as you please, because we all do that at Foreland Farms. Will you come when I'm ready to go up?"

She gave him a sweet, confused glance from her grey eyes.

"Do you think your family would mind?"

"Mind?" He smiled. "We never interfere with one another's affairs. It's not like many families, I fancy. We take it for granted that nobody in the family could do anything not entirely right. So we take that for granted and it's a jolly sensible arrangement."

She turned her face on the pillow presently; the ice-bag slid off; she sat up in her bathrobe, stretched her arms, smiled faintly:

"Shall I try again?" she asked.

"Oh, Lord!" he said, "_would_ you? Upon my word, I believe you would! No more posing to-day! I'm not a murderer. Lie there until you're ready to dress, and then ring for Selinda."

"Don't you want me?"

"Yes, but I want you alive, not dead! Anyway, I've got to talk to Westmore this morning, so you may be as lazy as you like--lounge about, read----" He went over to her, patted her cheek in the smiling, absent-minded way he had with her: "Tell me, ducky, how are you feeling, anyway?"

It confused her dreadfully to blush when he touched her, but she always did; and she turned her face away now, saying that she was quite all right again.

Preoccupied with his own thoughts, he nodded:

"That's fine," he said. "Now, trot along to Selinda, and when you're fixed up you can have the run of the place to yourself."

"Could I have my slippers?" She was very shy even about her bare feet when she was not actually posing.

He found her slippers for her, laid them beside the lounge, and strolled away. Westmore rang a moment later, but when he blew in like a noisy breeze Dulcie had disappeared.