“The St. Ives?” she repeated wonderingly. “Why should that interest them? What do you mean?” Then, suddenly, she bent forward, propped her elbows on the table, and amazed me with a slow, astonished, comprehending smile. “I see!” she murmured, studying me intently. “You thought that I screened the man who hid those papers, that I crossed the ocean on--similar business, perhaps even that on this side I was to take the documents from your trunk?” “Naturally,” I rejoined stiffly. “And I congratulate you. It was a brilliant piece of work; though, as its victim, I fail to see it in the rosiest light.” “I understand,” she went on, still smiling faintly. “You thought I was--well--Look over yonder.” Her glance, seeking the opposite wall unostentatiously, directed my attention to a black-lettered, conspicuously posted sign: BE SILENT! BE MISTRUSTFUL! THE EARS OF THE ENEMY ARE LISTENING! Thus it shouted its warning, like the thousands of its kind that are scattered about the trains, the boats, the railroad stations, and all the public places of France. “You thought I was the ears of the enemy, didn’t you?” the girl was asking. “You thought I was a German agent. I might have guessed! Well, in that case it was kind of you not to hand me over to the Modane gendarmes. I ought to thank you. But I wasn’t so suspicious when they searched your trunk and found the papers--I simply felt that they must be crazy to think you could be a spy.” I achieved a shrug of my shoulders, a polite air of incredulity; but, to tell the truth, I was a little less skeptical than I appeared. There was something in her manner that by no means suggested pretense. And she had said a true word about the occurrences on the _Re d’Italia_. If appearances meant facts, I myself had been proved guilty up to the hilt. “Mr. Bayne,” she was saying soberly, “I should like you to believe me--please! I am an American, and I have had cause lately to hate the Germans; all my bonds are with our own country and with France. There is some one very dear to me to whom this war has worked a cruel injustice. I have come to try to help that person; and for certain reasons--I can’t explain them--I had to come in secret or not at all. But I have done nothing wrong, nothing dishonorable. And so”--again her eyes challenged me--“I shall not sail from Bordeaux on the _Espagne_ on Saturday; and you shall choose for yourself whether you will speak of me to the French police.” It was not much of an argument, regarded dispassionately; yet it shook me. With sudden craftiness I resolved to trap her if I could.