Then she reviewed the conversation at which she had been an unseen auditor. Its meaning was plain to her. Her father was in communication with sinister agencies, was now the tool of such agencies. She had known him to be frantically pro-German, but that he had been an active participant in the plots and propaganda which filled the papers and which people were coming to understand daily as more and more of a menace to the well-being of their country, she had not imagined. And now Herman von Essen was to go farther; he was, so to speak, initiated into the inner ring of German intrigue, that inner ring commissioned by a conscienceless power to carry out unspeakable designs against a friendly, unsuspicious people! In short, she was the daughter of a traitor; of the same blood that flowed in the veins of a man plotting treason against the flag under which he had lived and prospered and to which his allegiance had been sworn.... She had hated her father before, she despised him now. She was filled with shame, deep, bitter, biting shame.... She asked herself what ought she to do, what could she do? She hated Germany because she believed it was Germany that had produced her father and his like. Because she had heard disloyal talk from her father's lips, she had become impetuously, girlishly loyal to the United States.... But in the condition that faced her, what could she do? Where lay her duty? It was a question too complex for her immaturity. She answered it by avoiding it. Her determination was the determination she had reached earlier in the day--to go away. Now her going away took on a new significance. It took on the quality of running away to avoid responsibility, to avoid answering a question to which she could see no answer. Once more she put on her coat and hat and crept out into the dark hall. The clock had struck midnight. This time she reached the outer door without interruption, shot back its bolt, and stepped out into the night. She ran to the street, fearful lest she should be stopped even now, and felt a great surge of relief as she dropped her note to Potter Waite into the mail-box. Then she turned, and with as great caution made her way back to her room, locked the door--a thing she had never been accustomed to do--and retired. CHAPTER X It was mid-afternoon when Hildegarde's note came to Potter at the hangar. He read it, reread it, and there was no more work for him that day. With the letter in his hands he left his drawing-board and went into his tiny office, where he sat down to consider it. Perhaps not so much to consider the letter as to consider Hildegarde herself.