Stewart rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he looked at her. She seemed not more than twenty, and she was almost startlingly beautiful, with that peculiar lustrous duskiness of skin more common among the Latin races than with us. Slightly built, she yet gave the impression of having in reserve unusual nervous energy, which would brace her to meet any crisis. But what was she doing here? Why should she be driven to leave Germany as the wife of a man whom she had never seen? Or was it all a lie--was she merely an adventuress seeking a fresh victim? Stewart looked at her again, then he put that thought away, definitely and forever. He had had enough experience of women, as surgeon in a public clinic, to tell innocence from vice; and he knew that it was innocence he was facing now. "You say you can't leave Germany without a passport?" he asked at last. "No one can leave Germany without a passport." She sat up suddenly and looked at him, a new light in her eyes. "Is it possible," she demanded, with trembling lips, "can it be possible that you possess a passport?" "Why, yes," said Stewart, "I have a passport. Unfortunately, it is for myself alone. Never having had a wife----" But she was standing before him, her hands outstretched, tremulous with eagerness. "Let me see it!" she cried. "Oh, let me see it!" He got it out, gave it to her, and watched her as she unfolded it. Here was a woman, he told himself, such as he had never met before--a woman of verve, of fire---- She was looking up at him with flaming eyes. "Mr. Stewart," she said, in a low voice, "you can save me, if you will." "Save you?" echoed Stewart. "But how?" She held the open passport toward him. "See, here, just below your name, there is a blank space covered with little parallel lines. If you will permit me to write in that space the words 'accompanied by his wife,' I am saved. The passport will then be for both of us." "Or would be," agreed Stewart, dryly, "if you were my wife. As it happens, you are not!" "It is such a little thing I ask of you," she pleaded. "We go to the station together--we take our seats in the train--at the frontier you show your passport. An hour later we shall be at Liège, and there our ways will part; but you will have done a noble action." There was witchery in her eyes, in her voice. Stewart felt himself slipping--slipping; but he caught himself in time. "I am afraid," he said, gently, "that you will have to tell me first what it is all about." "I can tell you in a word," she answered, drawing very near to him, and speaking almost in a whisper. "I am a Frenchwoman." "But surely," Stewart protested, "the Germans will not prevent your return to France! Why should they do that?" "It is not a question of returning, but of escaping. I am an Alsatian. I was born at Strassburg." "Oh," said Stewart, remembering the tone in which Bloem had spoken of Alsace-Lorraine and beginning vaguely to understand. "An Alsatian."