Her eyes glittered. "Who is she?" "It is not necessary for you to know," he answered coldly. "She happens, however, to be concerned in the business which I have on hand. She has been of great assistance to me, and she may yet be the means of helping me to final success. I cannot afford to have her upset by any false impressions." She looked at him almost wonderingly. "If you're not the limit!" she exclaimed. "Nothing matters to you except to succeed. You tell me in one breath that you care for a woman for the first time in your life, and in the next you speak of using her as your tool!" "You perhaps find that incomprehensible," he observed. "I do not blame you. At present, however, I have only one object in life, and that is to succeed in the business I have on hand. Whatever I may find it necessary to do to attain my ends, I shall do." She had gone a little pale, and her white teeth were holding down her full under lip. "Buy me another cocktail," she demanded. He obeyed, and she drank it at a gulp. "So you are not going to be nice to me?" she asked in a low tone. "That depends upon what you call nice," he answered. "I am rather up against a blank wall. Even if I succeed, I remain in this country at very considerable personal danger. I am not sure that even for your sake, Nora, it is well for you to associate with me. Why not go home? You'll find some of your people still there--and an old sweetheart or two, very likely." "It isn't a very warm welcome," she remarked, a little wistfully. "You have taken me by surprise," he reminded her. "I had not the slightest idea of your coming." "I know that," she sighed. "I suppose I ought not to have hoped for anything more. You've never been any different to me than to any of the others. You treat us all, men and women, just alike. You are gracious or cold, just according to how much we can help. I sometimes wonder, Mr. Jocelyn Thew, whether you have a heart at all." For a single moment he looked at her kindly. His hand even patted hers. It was a curious revelation. He was a kindly ordinary human being. "Ah, Nora," he said, "I am not quite so bad as that! But for many years I have had a great, driving impulse inside me, and at the back of it the most wonderful incentive in all the world. You know what that is, Nora--or perhaps you don't. To a woman it would be love, I suppose. To a man it is hate." She drew a little further away from him, as though something which had flamed in his eyes for a moment had frightened her. "Yes," she murmured, "you are like that." Jocelyn Thew was himself again almost at once. "Since we understand one another, Nora," he said, a little more kindly, "let me tell you that I am really very glad to see you, although you did give me rather a shock just now. I want you, if you will, to turn your head to the left. You see those two men--one seated in the easy-chair and the other on its arm?" "I see them."