least that the
Germans _believed_ him to be in their pay. And doubtless he was in
their pay, but to whom he was faithful nobody could know with any
certainty.

"How is our patient, doctor?" he asked.

"Convalescent," replied the doctor, shortly, as though not exactly
relishing the easy familiarity of this pale-eyed gentleman in gray.

"Can he travel to-day?" inquired Buckhurst, without apparent
interest.

"Before he travels," said the officer, "it might be well to find out
why he wears part of a hussar uniform."

"I've explained that to the provost," observed Buckhurst, examining
his well-kept finger-nails. "And I have a pass for him also--if he is
in a fit condition to travel."

The officer gave him a glance full of frank dislike, adjusted his
sabre, pulled on his white gloves, and, bowing very slightly to me,
marched straight out of the room and down the stairs without taking
any notice of Buckhurst. The latter looked after the officer, then his
indifferent eyes returned to me. Presently he sat down and produced a
small slip of paper, which he very carefully twisted into a cocked
hat.

"I suppose you doubt my loyalty to France," he said, intent on his
bit of paper.

Then, logically continuing my role of the morning, I began to upbraid
him for a traitor and swear that I would not owe my salvation to him,
and all the while he was calmly transforming his paper from one toy
into another between deft, flat fingers.

"You are unjust and a trifle stupid," he said. "I am paid by Prussia
for information which I never give. But I have the entre of their
lines. I do it for the sake of the Internationale. The Internationale
has a few people in its service ... _And it pays them well_."

He looked squarely at me as he said this. I almost trembled with
delight: the man undervalued me, he had taken me at my own figure, and
now, holding me in absolute contempt, he was going to begin on me.

"Scarlett," he said, "what does the government pay you?"

I began to protest in a torrent of patriotism and sentimentality. He
watched me impassively while I called Heaven to witness and proclaimed
my loyalty to France, ending through sheer breathlessness in a
maundering, tearful apotheosis where mixed metaphors jostled each
other--the government, the Emperor, and the French flag, consecrated
in blood--and finally, calling his attention to the fact that twenty
centuries had once looked down on this same banner, I collapsed in my
ch