"Because," he answered coolly, "it might suggest a possible means of communication with Germany to a person, say, like myself." "But you are not a flying man," Katharine reminded him. He smiled. "It would not be necessary," he observed, "for me to be my own messenger." There was a brief and rather a blank silence. The shadow of a new fear had arisen in Katharine's heart. The brother and sister exchanged quick glances. "I believe I am right," their host went on, a few minutes later, "in presuming that you have told Richard here the details of our little adventure upon the _City of Boston_?" "I have told him everything," Katharine acknowledged. "You don't mind that, do you? I felt that I had to." "You were quite right," Jocelyn Thew assented. "There is no reason for you to keep anything secret from Richard." The young man was conscious of a sudden recrudescence of anger, the flaming up again of his first resentment. "The whole thing was a rotten business, Thew," he declared. "I should never have resented your making use of me in any way you wished, but to make a tool of Katharine--" "My dear fellow," Jocelyn Thew interrupted, smoothly but with a dangerous glitter in his eyes, "please don't go on. I have an idea that you were going to say something offensive. Better not. Your sister came to no real harm. She never ran any real risk." "It depends upon the way you look at these things," the young man replied gloomily. "Katharine tells me that she is watched at her hotel day and night, and that she has come under the suspicion of the Government for being concerned in this affair." "That really isn't of much account," the other assured him. "You yourself," he went on, "came very nearly under suspicion once for something infinitely more serious." It was a chill note in the warmth of their festivities. Katharine glanced reproachfully at her host, and he seemed to realise at once his lapse.