"I can never marry any man.... You don't know.... There are terrible things--frightful things.... I am defiled, defiled.... And I love you...." She turned suddenly and ran from the room, sobbing and panting as she ran. He did not follow her, but looked after her with wide eyes into which horror was making its way. "_Defiled!_" he whispered once; then he stood erect, staring straight before him while one might have counted to a hundred slowly. After that he walked to the door of his private room, stepped inside, and shut the door after him. CHAPTER XIV It had been with Potter as if he had stood upon a lofty height surveying wonders and had fallen with incredible swiftness through darkness to strike the ground with frightful impetus. He felt the shock of that impact as if his physical body had been in collision instead of his soul.... _Defiled!_ The word was stamped in letters that burnt across his consciousness; his brain groped and fumbled about it as if it were some strange, monstrous thing no intelligence could grasp. Every other created thing was obliterated. That word stood isolated in the middle of his universe, and his thoughts, mothlike, fluttered about it, singeing their wings in its flame. There was no coherent thought, only dazed consciousness of an awful wound. There came a rap on his door, which grew insistent. "Come in," he called, mechanically, and a workman entered. "Everything's ready. Maybe you'd like to look her over before you go home." "Eh?" said Potter. "What's that?" The man repeated. "It's quitting-time," he added. Quitting-time! It had been daylight when he entered his room; now darkness had fallen. He had been unconscious of the unraveling of time. "Hey, Mort, telegram for the boss," another voice called from the machine-shop. Mort disappeared and presently placed the little yellow envelope in Potter's hand. He opened it as an automaton might have opened it. "Leaving Washington to-day; arrive Detroit in morning," it said, and was signed "Craig." For a brief interval Potter was careless whether Major Craig ever arrived or not. The whole matter seemed blurred, distant, as some vague memory.... Then came a sudden vivid clearness, a cold, painful clearness, akin to that dreadful condition into which arrives a man who cannot sleep. There was a white incandescence about his perceptions; something stark, sharply distinct about realities. He leaped to his feet. "Call the men here," he said. The men came in, surprise showing on their faces. "Boys," said Potter, "they're going to blow us up to-night." The men burst into exclamation, interrogation. "It's our turn," Potter said, and there was bitterness in his voice. "German spies.... They're coming to-night. I've been--warned." Perhaps he had it in his mind to make a request of them; perhaps he had felt their loyalty to be such as to require no request of him in the circumstances. None was needed.