s; turning this baffling cross-current to
advantage as many a time we had worked eddies of an adverse tide in
these difficult seas. But Davies was Davies, and there was an end of
it; his faith and simplicity shamed me. And the pity of it, the
cruelty of it, was that his very qualities were his last torture,
raising to the acutest pitch the conflict between love and
patriotism. Remember that the latter was his dominant life-motive,
and that here and now was his chance--if you would gauge the
bitterness of that conflict.

It was in its last throes now. His elbows were on the table, and his
twitching hands pressed on his forehead. He took them away.

'Of course we must go on. It can't be helped, that's all.'

'And you believe in her?'

'I'll remember what you've said. There may be some way out. And--I'd
rather not talk about that any more. What about the wreck?'

Further argument was futile. Davies by an effort seemed to sweep the
subject from his thoughts, and I did my best to do the same. At any
rate the air was cleared--we were friends; and it only remained to
grapple with the main problem in the light of the morning's
interview.

Every word that I could recollect of that critical conversation I
reviewed with Davies, who had imperfectly understood what he had not
been directly concerned in; and, as I did so, I began to see with
what cleverness each succeeding sentence of von Bruening's was
designed to suit both of two contingencies. If we were innocent
travellers, he was the genial host, communicative and helpful. If we
were spies, his tactics had been equally applicable. He had outdone
us in apparent candour, hiding nothing which he knew we would
discover for ourselves, and contriving at the same time both to gain
knowledge and control of our movements, and to convey us warnings,
which would only be understood if we were guilty, that we were
playing an idle and perilous game, and had better desist. But in one
respect we had had the advantage, and that was in the version Davies
had given of his stranding on the Hohenhoern. Inscrutable as our
questioner was, he let it appear not only that the incident was new
to him, but that he conjectured at its sinister significance. A
little cross-examination on detail would have been fatal to Davies's
version; but that was where our strength lay; he dared not
cross-examine for fear of suggesting to Davies suspicions which he
might never have felt. Indeed, I thought I detecte