eant a big circuit, and they would not be in Switzerland
till the evening. They would arrive in the dark, and pass out of it in
the dark, and there would be no chance of succour. She felt very lonely
and very weak.

Throughout the morning her fear grew. The more hopeless her chance of
defeating Ivery became the more insistently the dark shadow crept over
her mind. She tried to steady herself by watching the show from the
windows. The car swung through little villages, past vineyards and
pine-woods and the blue of lakes, and over the gorges of mountain
streams. There seemed to be no trouble about passports. The sentries at
the controls waved a reassuring hand when they were shown some card
which the chauffeur held between his teeth. In one place there was a
longish halt, and she could hear Ivery talking Italian with two
officers of Bersaglieri, to whom he gave cigars. They were fresh-faced,
upstanding boys, and for a second she had an idea of flinging open the
door and appealing to them to save her. But that would have been
futile, for Ivery was clearly amply certificated. She wondered what
part he was now playing.

The Marjolana route had been chosen for a purpose. In one town Ivery
met and talked to a civilian official, and more than once the car
slowed down and someone appeared from the wayside to speak a word and
vanish. She was assisting at the last gathering up of the threads of a
great plan, before the Wild Birds returned to their nest. Mostly these
conferences seemed to be in Italian, but once or twice she gathered
from the movement of the lips that German was spoken and that this
rough peasant or that black-hatted bourgeois was not of Italian blood.

Early in the morning, soon after she awoke, Ivery had stopped the car
and offered her a well-provided luncheon basket. She could eat nothing,
and watched him breakfast off sandwiches beside the driver. In the
afternoon he asked her permission to sit with her. The car drew up in a
lonely place, and a tea-basket was produced by the chauffeur. Ivery
made tea, for she seemed too listless to move, and she drank a cup with
him. After that he remained beside her.

'In half an hour we shall be out of Italy,' he said. The car was
running up a long valley to the curious hollow between snowy saddles
which is the crest of the Marjolana. He showed her the place on a road
map. As the altitude increased and the air grew colder he wrapped the
rugs closer around her and apologiz