He awoke in a flood of brightest sunshine; his bed, the floor, the walls, were bathed in it; netted reflections of water danced and quivered on the ceiling; and he lay looking at it, pleasantly conscious of green leaves stirring near his open window and of the golden splashing of a fountain.

There was a little bird out there, too, diligently practicing a few notes. The song was not elaborate. Translated, it seemed to consist of tweet! tweet! twilly-willy-willy! repeated an indefinite number of times.

Curious to discover what his surroundings resembled he rose and looked out of the curtained window. There was a grassy carrefour where a fountain spouted into a stone pool; all else was forest; a stream sparkled between tree-trunks, bridged where the drive crossed it.

To bathe and dress did not take him very long. In the hall, which seemed to be the main living-room below, he prowled about, examining a number of antlers and boar-heads mounted on the beamed and plastered walls. The former had been set up in German fashion, antlers, brow-antlers, and frontal bone; and these trophies appeared to him uninteresting – even a trifle ghastly when the bleached skull also was included.

The boars' heads were better, nothing extraordinary in size, but well-tusked. The taxidermy, however, was wretched.

The square hall itself did not appear particularly inviting. The usual long oak table and benches were there, a number of leather arm-chairs, book-racks, cue-racks, gun-racks with glazed panes to protect the weapons, a festoon of spears, hunting knives and curly hunting horns, skins on the floor, brown bear, wolf, and stag.

A badly stuffed otter displayed its teeth on the mantle over the fireplace between a pair of fighting cock pheasants and a jar of alcohol containing a large viper, which embellishments did not add to the cheerfulness of the place.

For the rest there was a billiard table shrouded in a rubber cloth, and three well-engraved portraits on the walls, Bismarck, after Lehnbach, Frederick the Great playing on a flute like fury, and the great War Lord of Europe himself, mustaches on end, sombre-eyed, sullen, cased in the magnificent steel panoply of the Guard Cuirassiers. The art gallery bored Guild, and he opened a door which he suspected communicated with the pantry.

It was a valet's closet and it smelled of camphor. Shooting-coats hung on stretchers; high-laced shooting-boots were ranged in rows. On a chair lay Karen's skirt and blouse-coat of covert cloth. Both were still slightly damp and wrinkled. Evidently they had been brought down here to be brushed and pressed while Karen slept.

Passing his hand over the brown silk lining of the coat gave him no clue to the hiding-place of the papers; what revealed their presence was a seam which had been hurriedly basted with black thread. The keen point of his pocket-knife released the basting. He drew out the papers, counted them, identified them one by one, and placed them in his breast pocket. Then he laid the coat across the back of the chair again and went out.

He had two hours to wait before there could be any decent hope of breakfast. Nobody seemed to be stirring in the house. After a few minutes he unlocked the front door and went out into the early sunshine.

It was as warm as a spring day; rain had freshened grass and trees; he sat down on the fountain's rim and looked into the pool where a dozen trout lay motionless, their fins winnowing the icy water.

No doubt some spring, high on the wooded hills, had been piped down to furnish the pool with this perpetually bubbling jet.

The little bird who had entertained him vocally earlier in the morning was still vocal somewhere in a huge beech-tree. Around a spot of moisture on the gravel-drive two butterflies flitted incessantly. And over all brooded the calm and exquisite silence of the forest.

An hour or more later he got up and re-entered the house.

First he took a look at the valet's room. Evidently Karen's clothes had been brushed and pressed, for they had disappeared.

Another door in the square hall promised to lead into the pantry, judging from significant sounds within.

It did, and the housekeeper was in there as energetically busy as every German woman always is when occupied. And German women are always occupied.

The kindly soul appeared to be much flattered by his visit. They had quite a gossiping time of it while she was preparing the breakfast dishes.

It was mostly a monologue.

No, she and Fritzl were not lonely at Quellenheim, although it was pleasant to have the Lodge open and a noble company there shooting. But, like Marlbrook, the Herr Baron had gone to the wars – alas! – and it might take him some time to capture Paris and London and set the remainder of the world in order.

But it really seemed too bad; the Herr Baron was fond of his shooting; Fritzl had reported some good antlers in the forest, and a grey boar or two – but enormous! As for the place it would certainly go to ruin what with faggot stealers and godless poachers! – And the foresters, keepers, and even the wood-choppers all gone off and deserting the place – think of it! – the ungrateful Kerls – gone! – and doubtless to join the crazy Belgian army which had refused to permit Prussian troops to pass! Prussian troops! The impudence of it! Gratitude! There was little of that in the world it seemed.

"When does the Herr Baron return here?" inquired Guild, smiling.

It appeared that the Herr Baron was to have arrived at Quellenheim this very week. But yesterday his adjutant telegraphed that he could not come perhaps for many weeks. No doubt he was very busy chasing the French and English. It was a pity; because the autumn is wunderschön at Quellenheim. And as for the deer! – they stand even in the driveway and look at the Lodge, doubtless wondering, sir, why they are neglected by the hunters, and asking one another why good fat venison is no longer appreciated at Quellenheim.

"Could you tell me where I may telegraph to the Herr Baron?" asked the young man, immensely amused by her gossip.

"That I can, sir. My careful household reports are sent to the Herr Baron through military headquarters at Arenstein, Prussia. That is where he is to be addressed."

"And a telegraph office?"

"At the railroad station."

"In communication with Prussia?"

"Yes, sir," she said with a vigorous nod. "And whenever any of the yokels here about tamper with the wires the Uhlans come and chase them till they think the devil is after them!"

"Uhlans. Here?"

"And why not? Certainly the Uhlans come occasionally. They come when it is necessary. Also they cross the Grand Duchy when they please."

"Then, if I write out a telegram here – "

"Fritzl will take it, never fear, sir. Leave it on the billiard table – any telegrams or letters – and they shall be sent when Fritzl drives to the station."

"Where," he inquired, "is Lesse Forest?" And could he send a messenger?

"Lesse Forest? Why the chasse wall separates the range of the Lesse Hills from Quellenheim. Any peasant at Trois Fontaines who possesses a bicycle could take a message and return in an hour."

"Do you know who leases the chasse at Lesse?"

"Yes. Some wealthy Americans."

So he smiled his thanks and returned to the hall. There was writing material on the long oak table. And first of all he wrote out a brief telegram to General von Reiter saying that he had fulfilled his promise.

This was all he might venture to say in a telegram; the rest he embodied in his letter to the Herr Baron:

Having telegraphed to you, and fulfilled my enforced obligations to the letter, I am confident that you, in your turn, will fulfill yours, release the hostages held by your troops at Yslemont, and spare the village any further destruction and indemnity.

You had made it a part of the contract that, in case you were not at Quellenheim, I was to remain over night under your roof.

I therefore have done so. It was not an agreeable sensation, and your forced hospitality, you will recognize, imposes no obligations upon an unwilling guest.

Now, as I say, the last and least item of my indebtedness to you is finally extinguished, and I am free once more to do what I choose.

I shall be a consistent enemy to your country in whatever capacity the Belgian Government may see fit to employ me. I shall do your country all the harm I can. Not being a public executioner I have given the spies in your employment in London a week's grace to clear out before I place proofs of their identity in the hands of the British Government.

This, I believe, closes, for the present, our personal account.

Miss Girard is well, suffered no particular hardship, and is, I suppose, quite safe at Quellenheim where your capable housekeeper and her son are in charge of the Lodge.

May I add that, personally, I entertain no animosity toward you or toward any German, individually – only a deep and inextinguishable hatred toward all that your Empire stands for, and a desire to aid in the annihilation of this monstrous anachronism of the twentieth century.

When he had signed and sealed this, and directed it, he wrote to his friend Darrel:

Dear Harry:

If you are at Lesse Forest still, which I understand adjoins the hills of Quellenheim – and if your friends the Courlands still care to ask me for a day or two, I shall be very glad to come. I am at Quellenheim, Trois Fontaines.

Please destroy the letter I intrusted to you to send to my mother. Everything is all right again. I may even have time to fish with you for a day or two.

The messenger from Trois Fontaines who takes this will wait for an answer.

Please convey my respect and my very lively sense of obligation to the Courlands. And don't let them ask me if it inconveniences them. I can go to Luxembourg just as well and see you there if you can run over.

Did you get my luggage? I am wearing my last clean shirt. But my clothes are the limit.

If I am to stop for a day or two at the Courlands please telegraph to Luxembourg for my luggage as soon as you receive this.

Yours as usual,
Guild

P. S.

Do Uhlans ever annoy the Courlands? I imagine that Lesse is too far from the railway and too unimportant from a military standpoint to figure at all in any operations along the edge of the Grand Duchy. And also any of the Ardennes is unfit as a highway between Rhenish Prussia and France. Am I correct?

G.

He had sealed and directed this letter, and was gazing meditatively out of the diamond-leaded windows at the splashing fountain in the court, when a slight sound attracted his attention and he turned, then rose and stepped forward.

Karen gave him her hand, smiling. In the other hand she held the last of her orchids.

"Are you rested?" he asked.

"Yes. Are you?"

"Perfectly, thank you. Really it is beautiful outside the house."

She lifted her lovely eyes and stood gazing out into the sunshine.

"There is no word from General von Reiter?" she asked, absently caressing her cheek with the fragrant blossom in her hand.

"Not yet," he said.

"If none comes, what are you going to do?"

"I am free, anyhow, to leave now."

"Free?"

"Free of my engagement with Baron von Reiter."

"Free of your obligations to —me?" she asked in a low voice.

He turned to her seriously: "My allegiance to you needs no renewal, Karen, because it has never been broken. You have my friendship if you wish for it. It is yours always as long as you care for it."

"I do… Are you going to leave – Quellenheim?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"When a messenger brings me an answer to a letter which I shall send this morning."

She stood caressing her lips with his flower and gazing dreamily into the forest.

"So you really are going," she said.

"I cannot help it."

"I thought" – she forced a smile – "that you intended to rob me first."

He did not answer.

"Had you forgotten?" she asked, still with the forced smile.

"No."

"Do you still mean to do it?"

"I told you that I had to have the papers."

"Yes, and I told you that I should make it as difficult as I could for you. And I'm going to. Because I don't want you to go." She laughed, then sighed very frankly: "Of course," she added, "I don't suppose I could keep them very long if you have made up your mind to take them."

"Is that your idea of me?" he asked, laughing.

She nodded, thoughtfully: "You take what you want, sooner or later. There is no hope in opposing you. You are that kind of man. I have learned that."

She touched the orchid to her chin meditatively. "It surprised me," she added. "I have not been accustomed to authority like yours. I am my own mistress, and I supposed I was accountable to myself alone. But – " she lifted her eyes, "it appears that I am accountable to you. And the realization does not seem to anger me very deeply."

He looked away: "I do not try to control you, Karen," he said in a low voice.

"You have done so whether or not you have tried. I don't know what has happened to me. Do you?"

"Nothing," he said, forcing a laugh. "Except you are learning that the greatest pleasure of friendship is a confidence in it which nothing can disturb."

"Confidence in friendship – yes. But confidence in you! – that ended in our stateroom. Without confidence I thought friendship impossible… And here I am asking you not to go away – because I – shall miss you. Will you tell me what is the matter with a girl who has no confidence in a man and who desires his companionship as I do yours?" Her cheeks flushed, but her eyes were steady, bright, and intelligent: "Am I going to fall in love with you, Kervyn?"

He laughed mirthlessly: "No, not if you can reason with yourself about it," he said. "It merely means that you are the finest, most honest, most fearless woman I ever knew, capable of the most splendid friendship, not afraid to show it. That is all it means, Karen. And I am deeply, humbly grateful… And very miserable… Because – "

The entrance of Frau Bergner with the breakfast tray checked him. They both turned toward the long oak table.

Fortunately the culinary school where the housekeeper had acquired her proficiency was not German. She had learned her art in Alsace.

So the coffee was fragrant and the omelette a dream; and there were grapes from the kitchen arbour and ham from a larder never lacking the succulent by-products of the sanglier of the Ardennes.

Frau Bergner took his letters and telegram, promising that Fritzl should find somebody with a bicycle at Trois Fontaines to carry the other note to Lesse Forest.

She hovered over them while they ate. The breakfast was a silent one.

Afterward Karen wrote a number of notes addressed to her modiste in Berlin and to various people who might, in her present emergency, supply her with something resembling a wardrobe.

Guild had taken his pipe out to the fountain, where she could see him through the window, seated on the coping of the pool, smoking and tracing circles in the gravel with a broken twig.

She hurried her notes, called the housekeeper to take them, then, without taking hat or gloves, she went out into the sunshine. The habit, so easily acquired, of being with Guild was becoming a necessity, and neither to herself nor to him had it yet occurred to her to pretend anything different.

There was, in her, an inherent candour, which unqualified, perhaps unsoftened by coquetry, surprises more than it attracts a man.

But its very honesty is its undoing; it fails to hold the complex masculine mind; its attractiveness is not permanent. For the average man requires the subtlety of charm to stir him to sentiment; and charm means uncertainty; and uncertainty, effort.

No effortless conquest means more to a man than friendship. And friendship is nothing new to a man.

But it was new to Karen; she had opened her mind to it; she was opening her heart to it, curious concerning it, interested as she had never before been, sincere about it – sincere with herself.

Never before had the girl cared for a man more than she had cared about any woman. The women she had known had not been inferior in intelligence to the men she knew. And a normal and wholesome mind and heart harbour little sentiment when the mind is busy and the body sound.

But since she had known this man she knew also that he had appealed to something more than her intelligence.

Vaguely realizing this in the crisis threatened by his violence, she had warned him that he was violating something more than friendship.

Then the episode had passed and become only an unquiet memory; but the desire for his companionship had not passed; it increased, strengthening itself with every hour in his company, withstanding self-analysis, self-reproach, defying resentment, mocking her efforts to stimulate every tradition of pride – even pride itself.

Deeply conscious of the power his personality exercised over her, perplexed, even bewildered at herself, she had not only endured the intimacy of contact with him, but in her heart she accepted it, cared for it, was conscious of relaxation and contentment except for the constant array of traditional indictments which her conscience was busily and automatically finding against her.

She could not comprehend why what he had done had not annihilated her interest in him; why she, even with effort, could find in her mind no abiding anger, no scorn, no contempt for him or for what he had done.

And because she was intelligent and healthy, in her perplexity she had tried to reason – had found nothing to account for her state of mind unless love could account for it – and knowing nothing of love, had admitted the possibility to herself and even to him. Intelligence, candour, ignorance of deeper emotion – coupled with the normal mental and physical innocence of a young girl – this was the character she had been born with and which had naturally and logically developed through nineteen years of mental and bodily cultivation. The girl was most fatally equipped for an awakening.

He stood up when she appeared, knocked out his pipe and advanced to meet her. He had been doing a lot of thinking. And he had concluded to talk very frankly to her about her friendship with him – frankly, kindly, discouraging gaily any mistaken notion she might harbour that there could be any room, any reason, any fitness for a deeper sentiment in this friendship – anything more significant than the delightful and frank affection now existing between them.

"Shall we walk in the forest, Karen?" he said.

"Yes, please."

So they turned into a sentier which curved away through a fern-set rabbit warren, over a wooden footbridge, and then led them on through alternate flecks of sunshine and shadow through a noble forest of beech and oak.

The green and brown mast lay thick under-foot, premature harvest of windfalls – perhaps the prodigality of those reckless sylvan spendthrifts, the squirrels and jays.

Here and there a cock-pheasant ran through a spinny at their approach; rabbits scuttled into wastes of bracken as yet uncurled and unblemished by a frost; distant crashes and a dull galloping signalled the unseen flight of deer. Now and then the dark disturbance of the forest floor betrayed where the horny, furry snouts of boar had left furrows of fresh black earth amid the acorns.

They came upon the stream again – or perhaps a different little brook, splashing and curling amid its ferns and green, drenched mosses. Stepping stones crossed it; Karen passed lightly, surely, on little flying feet, and stood laughing on the other side as he paused to poke about in the pool in hopes of starting a trout into arrowy flight.

When he crossed she had seated herself under a fir, the branches of which swept the ground around her; and so utterly had she vanished that she was obliged to call him before he could discover her whereabouts.

"Under this green tent," she said, "if I had a bed, and some books, and clothes, and food, and my maid and – a piano, I could live most happily all summer." She laughed, looked at him – "if I had all these and —you," she added.

"Why drag me into such a perfect paradise?"

"I shouldn't drag you," she said gravely. "I should merely tell you where I lived."

"I didn't mean it that way."

"You might have, with reason. I have demanded a great deal of your time."

"I have demanded all of yours!" he retorted, lightly.

"Not more than I was content to give… It seems all a dream to me – which began when you rang the bell at Hyacinth Villa and roused me from my sleep. And," she added with a gay flash of malice, "you have kept me awake ever since."

"And you, me!"

"Not a bit! You slept in the railway car."

"So did you."

"In your arms, practically…" She looked up at him curiously: "What did you think of me, Kervyn?"

"I thought you were an exceedingly tired girl."

"I was. Is that all you thought about it?"

"You know," he said, laughing, "when a man is asleep he doesn't do much thinking."

"What did you think afterward?"

"About what?"

"About my sleeping against your shoulder?"

"Nothing," he said carelessly.

"Were you quite – indifferent?"

He didn't know how to answer.

"I was not," she said. "I was contented, and I thought continually about our friendship – except when what I was doing made me uneasy about – what I was doing… Isn't it curious that a girl could do a thing like that and feel comfortable except when she remembered that a girl doesn't usually do a thing like that?"

He began to laugh, and she laughed, too.

She said: "Always my inclination has been, from a child, to explain things to myself. But I can't explain you, yet. You are very different, you know."

"Not a bit – "

"Yes, please. I've found that out… Tell me, do you really mean to go today?"

"Yes, Karen, I do."

"Couldn't you stay?"

"I really couldn't."

"Why, please?"

"I must be about my business."

"Enlistment?"

"Yes."

"In the Guides," she said, as though to herself.

He nodded.

"The Guides," she repeated, looking rather vacantly at a sun spot that waxed and waned on the dry carpet of fir-needles at her feet. "I have seen them. They are odd, with their furry headgear and their green jackets and boots and cherry-red breeches… I have danced with officers of the Guides in Brussels… I never thought that my first man friend would be an officer in the Guides."

"I never thought my best friend among women would be the first woman I ever robbed," he said rather grimly.

"Oh, but you haven't done it yet! And I don't see how you propose to do it."

He looked up, forcing a smile:

"Don't you?"

"Not if you are going away. How can you? The only way I can see is for you to stay at Quellenheim in hopes that I might forget to lock my door some night. You know," she said, almost wistfully, "I might forget – if you remained long enough."

He shook his head.

"Then you have given it up?"

"No."

"But I don't see!"

She was so pretty in her perplexity, so utterly without art in her frankness and curiosity that the impulse to mystify and torment her possessed him.

"Will you bet that I shall not have those papers in my possession within ten minutes?" he asked.

"How can you?"

"I can. And I shall."

She gazed at him incredulously, then suddenly her cheeks lost their colour and she stood up under the fir-tree.

"Must I take them or will you give them up, Karen?" he asked, laughing, as he rose.

She took a step backward, away from him. The tree-trunk checked her.

"You know I can't give them to you," she said unsteadily. "It would be dishonourable."

"Am I to take them?"

"Are you going to?"

"Do you mean to say that rather than surrender them you would endure such violence as that?"

"I promised… Are you going to – to hurt me, Kervyn?" she stammered.

"I'll try not to."

She stood there, breathing fast, white, defiant.

"You'll have to surrender," he said. "You might as well. It's an honourable capitulation in the presence of superior force."

"No."

"You refuse?"

"Yes, please."

He said: "Very well, then," with an alarming frown.

"Kervyn – "

"What?"

"If you tear my gown I – I shall have to go to bed."

"I'm not going to touch your gown," he said. "I'm going to charm those papers so they'll leave their hiding place and fly into my pocket. Watch me very attentively, Karen!" And he tucked up his cuffs and made a few short passes in the air. Then he smiled at her.

"Kervyn! I thought you meant to take them. Do you know you really did frighten me?"

"I have got them," he said.

The colour came back into her cheeks; she smiled at him in a breathless way.

"You did frighten me," she said. She came slowly back and seated herself on the carpet of fir-needles. He sat down beside her.

"Karen, dear," he said, "you are a brick and I'm a brute. I took your papers this morning. I had to, dear."

And he drew them from his breast pocket and showed them to her.

The girl sat in wide-eyed amazement for a moment. Suddenly her face flushed and the tears flashed in her eyes.

"You have ridiculed me!" she said. "You have treated me like a child!"

"Karen – "

"I will not listen! I shall never listen to you again! You have played with me, hurt me, humiliated me. You have ruled and overruled me! You gained my friendship and treated it – and me – without ceremony. And I let you! I must have been mad – "

Her mouth quivered; she clenched her hands, gazing at him through eyes that glimmered wet:

"How could you do it? I was honest with you; I had had no experience with a man I cared for. You knew it. You let me care for you until I didn't understand – until the sincerity and force of what I felt for you bewildered me!

"And now – and now I am – unhappy – unhappy – miserable, ashamed – " She caught her breath, scarcely able to see him through her tears – no longer able to control the quivering lip.

She rose swiftly, encountered something – his arm – felt herself drawn resistlessly into his embrace.

"Forgive me, Karen," he said. "I did not realize – what was happening to – us both."

She rested her forehead on his shoulder for a moment.

"Can you forgive me, Karen?"

"Yes."

"You know I truly care for you?"

"Yes."

Scarcely knowing what he was doing, he bent to touch her forehead with his lips, and she lifted her face at the same moment. His kiss fell on her mouth, and she responded. At the same instant her girlhood ended forever – vanished on her lips in a little sigh.

Dazed, silenced, a trifle faint, she turned from him blindly.

"Please," she whispered, in the ghost of a voice; and he released her.

For a few moments she stood resting against the fir-tree, her left arm across her eyes, frightened, motionless.

The forest was very still around her, as though every leaf were listening.