her
country, her flag, and yet--

There on the floor, not a dozen feet away from her, shameful circlets of
steel girdling both his wrists and his ankles, lay the one man for whom
she knew now she cared the most in all the world, the man she had just
betrayed into Chief Fleck's hands.

Bitterly she reproached herself for not having tried to induce Frederic
to escape. In mental anguish she pictured him--the man she
loved--standing in the prisoner's dock in some courtroom, branded as a
spy, as a leader of spies, charged with an attempt to slaughter the
inhabitants--the women and children--of a sleeping, unprotected city.
With growing horror it came to her that in all probability she herself
would be called on to testify against him. It might even be her
evidence that would result in his being led out before a firing squad
and put to an ignominious death.

She dared not even look in his direction now. What must he be thinking
about her? He had known that she loved him. In despair and doubt she
wondered whether he could understand that she, too, had been influenced
to perform her soul-wracking task by a sense of honor, of duty to her
country equally as potent as that which had impelled him to participate
in this terrible plan to destroy New York. Why had she not informed him
that his plans were known to the United States Government's agents?
Surely she could have convinced him that his was a hopeless mission. The
plot would have been successfully thwarted, and he would not be lying
there in shackles, but, even though forced to flee, who knew, perhaps
some day after peace had come, he might have been able to return for
her. A great sob rose from her heart, but she stifled it back. She would
be brave and true. She must be glad for those of her people that had
been saved.

But her parents! What would they say? Her father and mother soon now
must learn that she had been deceiving them day after day. How horrified
and amazed they would be to learn that the chauffeur she had brought
into the household was in reality a government detective, and that she,
their daughter, had been a witness of his tragic death. What would they
think when they learned about her part in this gruesome drama that had
just been enacted? They, serene in their trust in her, supposing she was
at the home of one of her girl friends, were peacefully asleep in their
quiet apartment. How horror-stricken her mother would be if she could
have seen her daught