one responsible for his meeting a disgraceful death?
How could she go on with it? She must warn him. She must try to persuade
him to give up his plans. She tried hard to steady herself, to think
calmly. She must listen to every word he was saying and try to
remember it.

"This little packet is for you," he went on. "I want you to keep it
safely. In case anything happens, in the event that within one month I
have not returned and you have heard nothing of me, I wish you to open
it and keep what it contains. Promise me that you will do what I ask."

In a panic of indecision she got up from her chair, trying to frame a
score of questions, but none of them succeeded in passing the barrier of
her trembling lips.

"Promise me," he said softly yet impellingly, as he placed the little
packet in her hand and closed her fingers over it.

"I promise," she whispered, hardly knowing what she said.

Quickly he caught her in his powerful arms. For just a second he held
her there, his face close to hers, his blue eyes burning into hers with
a steady inscrutable gaze as if he was trying to read in them the love
her lips had refused to speak.

Then, so quickly that it was all over before she quite realized what had
happened, he had kissed her passionately full on the lips and was gone.

Overcome with the lassitude which follows emotional crises, trembling in
every limb, weak as from a long illness, the girl sank back into a
chair, still clutching in her hand the sealed packet Hoff had entrusted
to her. Minute after minute she sat there with staring eyes, with heart
beating madly, with her whole body racked with the torment of
her thoughts.

Slowly she lifted the packet and turned it over and over, wondering what
it could possibly contain, questioning herself as to what could have
been Frederic Hoff's motive in entrusting it to her. Was there, she
wondered, under those seals, some evidence of his guilt and treachery
that he had not dared to leave behind him? He must have known that she
suspected him and was seeking to entrap him. Had he, knowing all this,
but sensing the love for him that he had kindled in her, taken advantage
of it and extorted from her her promise to keep it safe?

Wherein lay her duty now? More than ever she was certain that Frederic
Hoff was on some hazardous mission for the enemy. He had all but
admitted his nationality to her. Her own country's welfare demanded that
the Hoffs' plans should be discovered an