“Only for a minute,” she answered tremulously. “I’m going out soon. I have an engagement.” “I’ll come right over. I will not keep you long.” As she awaited his arrival, subconsciously desirous of looking her best in his presence, she stopped almost mechanically before her mirror to adjust her hair, letting him wait for her for a few minutes. He sprang forward to meet her as she entered the room where he was, his face beaming with delight at the sight of her. “Jane,” he cried, with a volume of meaning in the monosyllable, as seizing her hand, he held it tightly and gazed earnestly into her face. Bravely she tried to meet his gaze, to read in his face if she could the object of his unexpected visit, but her eyes fell before his, and the hot blood surged into her cheeks. Within her raged a desperate battle between her head and heart. Mingled with her unwelcome quickening of the pulse at his approach and admiration for his audacity in coming to her when he must know that she knew what he was, there was also an overwhelming sense of futile rage that he, a scheming German plotter, dared intrude his presence into an American home. “I’m glad to see you appear no worse for your accident,” he said, releasing her hand at last. “You got home all right, without attracting any one’s notice?” “Oh, yes,” she answered, trying to make her reply seem wholly indifferent and disinterested. “Your chauffeur is all right, too,” he went on. “I telephoned this morning. He had already left the doctor’s. There’s nothing more the matter with him than a broken arm and a scalp wound. That’s fortunate, isn’t it?” “Very fortunate,” she admitted. All at once as they stood there there seemed to have arisen between them an invisible, impenetrable barrier. They faced each other wordlessly, each embarrassed by the knowledge of the secret gulf that was between them. Hoff was the first to recover from it. “Come,” he said, “sit down. There is something I wish to say to you,—something of the utmost importance, Jane.” Still struggling with her emotions, Jane allowed him to place a chair for her and seated herself, striving all the while to crush back into her heart the warmth of feeling toward him that always overwhelmed her in his presence, endeavoring to present to him a mask of cold indifference. Yet her curiosity, as well as her affections, had been greatly stirred by his remark. What was it that he was about to say to her? Did he intend, in spite of the insurmountable obstacles between them, dared he, ask her to marry him? Tremblingly she waited for what he had to say. “Jane,” he said, “you know that I love you. I am confident, too, that you love me.” “I don’t love you,” she forced her unwilling lips to say. “I can’t. When our country is at war, when she needs men, brave men, how could any true American girl love any man who stayed at home, who idled about the hotels, who—”