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 m