Joan stopped. “Why, it’s the house you are always talking about,” she said. “Are you thinking of taking it?” “It was clever of him to make use of you,” he said. “If he’d sent it through anybody else, I’d have published it.”!

In her white night dress, with her hair in two long plaits, she looked at herself once more. She seemed to be no one of any importance at all: just a long little girl going to bed. With no one to kiss her good night. “We’ll keep it off that plane, if you don’t mind,” answered Joan with a touch of severity.

“But they report his speeches. They are bound to,” explained Joan. The German laughed again. “Oh, they know their business,” he answered. “You have your glass of beer and go to bed, and when you wake up in the morning you find that war has been declared; and you keep your mouth shut—unless you want to be shot for a traitor. Not that it would have made much difference,” he added. “I admit that. The ground had been too well prepared. England was envious of our trade. King Edward had been plotting our destruction. Our papers were full of translations from yours, talking about ‘La Revanche!’ We were told that you had been lending money to Russia to enable her to build railways, and that when they were complete France and Russia would fall upon us suddenly. ‘The Fatherland in danger!’ It may be lies or it may not; what is one to do? What would you have done—even if you could have done anything?” “I take myself as typical,” she continued. “When I was twenty I could have loved you. You were the type of man I did love.”