man as a proof of your
unapproachable loyalty?"

"He is clever, my faith, clever as the Devil. He discerns the German
plans before they are made. He has their agents within a wire net
which closes whenever he wishes. He has swept London clean of the foul
brood which festered here before the war. I have great, limitless
confidence in this Dawson whom I detest, but to whom I am of all his
assistants the most loyal. He now suspects that contained within the
Flying Corps of us, the Belgians, and the English are observers in the
pay of Germany. It is an idea most splendid. For if it is true, what
greater opportunity could be given to any spies! To fly over our
lines, to learn of everything, and then to convey the news to the
enemy by way of the air! If he had told me of this most perspicuous of
theories, I would have aided him with all the wealth of my genius. But
no, he tells to me nothing. He comes and goes, he spins his web like a
great fat female spider, but he tells me nothing. It is my belief that
he despises me because I am French, _aristocrat_, and _catholique_.
But I will show him; I will, as you call it, score most bitterly off
him; I will do in my way successfully what he vainly seeks to do in
his way. _Conspuez_ Dawson!"

"This is quite like the old times of the Dreyfus case," said the
Englishman.

"Dreyfus! But I will speak not of that. It is buried. We French are
one people now, one and indivisible. Though of traitors, the villain
Dreyfus was of the most horrible. Let us speak of _cet homme tres
sale_, Dawson. I do not know his plans. They will be shrewd, but
without imagination, without flair. He will watch, with his eyes of a
cat, the French and Belgian flying officers who come to London, but he
will not discover their secrets. For he does not understand, this cold
English Dawson, that secrets which endanger the neck are told only to
women."

"Yet I have heard that he has a team of women--his harem, as it is
called. I have never seen one of them."

"Bah! Englishwomen, of the large feet and the so protruding teeth! Who
would tell of his precious secrets to them!"

"Oh, come, M. Froissart. We have as many pretty women in London as you
have in Paris."

"It is possible, my friend. All things, the most improbable, are
possible. But they conceal themselves most assiduously. I have not
seen them, these so pretty Englishwomen."

"Well, well. You are a bit out of date as regards our women. But I
don't want