"that the authorities at Gibraltar
would take a less flattering view. For instance, if those Englishmen
learned that I had refrained from telling them of our meeting at the St.
Ives, I should hear from them, I fancy."

Again her eyes were widening. What attractive eyes she had!

"The St. Ives?" she repeated wonderingly. "Why should that interest
them? What do you mean?" Then, suddenly, she bent forward, propped
her elbows on the table, and amazed me with a slow, astonished,
comprehending smile. "I see!" she murmured, studying me intently. "You
thought that I screened the man who hid those papers, that I crossed the
ocean on--similar business, perhaps even that on this side I was to take
the documents from your trunk?"

"Naturally," I rejoined stiffly. "And I congratulate you. It was a
brilliant piece of work; though, as its victim, I fail to see it in the
rosiest light."

"I understand," she went on, still smiling faintly. "You thought I
was--well--Look over yonder."

Her glance, seeking the opposite wall unostentatiously, directed my
attention to a black-lettered, conspicuously posted sign:

BE SILENT!

BE MISTRUSTFUL!

THE EARS OF THE ENEMY ARE LISTENING!

Thus it shouted its warning, like the thousands of its kind that are
scattered about the trains, the boats, the railroad stations, and all
the public places of France.

"You thought I was the ears of the enemy, didn't you?" the girl was
asking. "You thought I was a German agent. I might have guessed! Well,
in that case it was kind of you not to hand me over to the Modane
gendarmes. I ought to thank you. But I wasn't so suspicious when they
searched your trunk and found the papers--I simply felt that they must
be crazy to think you could be a spy."

I achieved a shrug of my shoulders, a polite air of incredulity; but, to
tell the truth, I was a little less skeptical than I appeared. There was
something in her manner that by no means suggested pretense. And she
had said a true word about the occurrences on the _Re d'Italia_. If
appearances meant facts, I myself had been proved guilty up to the hilt.

"Mr. Bayne," she was saying soberly, "I should like you to believe
me--please! I am an American, and I have had cause lately to hate the
Germans; all my bonds are with our own country and with France. There is
some one very dear to me to whom this war has worked a cruel injustice.
I have come to try to help that person; and for certain reasons--I can't