in my arms I stroked
her hair and murmured things which seemed to spring out of some
ancestral memory. Certainly my tongue had never used them before, nor
my mind imagined them ... By and by she slipped her arms round my neck
and with a half sob strained towards me. She was still trembling.

'Dick,' she said, and to hear that name on her lips was the sweetest
thing I had ever known. 'Dick, is it really you? Tell me I'm not
dreaming.'

'It's me, sure enough, Mary dear. And now I have found you I will never
let you go again. But, my precious child, how on earth did you get
here?'

She disengaged herself and let her little electric torch wander over my
rough habiliments.

'You look a tremendous warrior, Dick. I have never seen you like this
before. I was in Doubting Castle and very much afraid of Giant Despair,
till you came.'

'I think I call it the Interpreter's House,' I said.

'It's the house of somebody we both know,' she went on. 'He calls
himself Bommaerts here. That was one of the two names, you remember. I
have seen him since in Paris. Oh, it is a long story and you shall hear
it all soon. I knew he came here sometimes, so I came here too. I have
been nursing for the last fortnight at the Douvecourt Hospital only
four miles away.'

'But what brought you alone at night?'

'Madness, I think. Vanity, too. You see I had found out a good deal,
and I wanted to find out the one vital thing which had puzzled Mr
Blenkiron. I told myself it was foolish, but I couldn't keep away. And
then my courage broke down, and before you came I would have screamed
at the sound of a mouse. If I hadn't whistled I would have cried.'

'But why alone and at this hour?'

'I couldn't get off in the day. And it was safest to come alone. You
see he is in love with me, and when he heard I was coming to Douvecourt
forgot his caution and proposed to meet me here. He said he was going
on a long journey and wanted to say goodbye. If he had found me
alone--well, he would have said goodbye. If there had been anyone with
me, he would have suspected, and he mustn't suspect me. Mr Blenkiron
says that would be fatal to his great plan. He believes I am like my
aunts, and that I think him an apostle of peace working by his own
methods against the stupidity and wickedness of all the Governments. He
talks more bitterly about Germany than about England. He had told me
how he had to disguise himself and play many parts on his mission, and
of course