Romney was startled at the foreignness of the observation at this moment. Nothing seemed normal that had not to do with their story. He found himself telling her hastily of the suspicion he had encountered in regard to New China’s idea of waging war—if she were called to war; and also of the incident of the Japanese spy. "That was hard to take," he added. "I thought I was pretty well orientalised, but the old western training cropped up. I tried to make myself believe that I wasn’t responsible for his capture, but I didn’t make a very good job of that. I had run him down. Perhaps they would have got him, but the fact is, they got him where they did because of my efforts. It broke me for a moment—the little man being put out that way at my feet—" "You speak of things as they happened—not making them less to save yourself," she said. "That would be short-sighted and unsatisfactory." "What must you have thought of me for telling you an untruth to make you go on?" "I didn’t think of it as an untruth. You wanted me to go for the good of others—and that way came to you—" "But you would not have descended to such a trick—" "Trick!" he said impatiently; "don’t speak of it that way. Who am I to forget what you said—about the little ones needing a voice and a sign? ... And I want to add about the men who have sent me: they are pure. They hold their own lives as cheap as those whom they find necessary to put out of the way. "They loved the little spy, too. They have a dream of a purer world. I don’t think anywhere on earth the dream is so close to coming true as it is in the minds of those men. I am proud to serve them." "I cannot see you running after the little spy, through the streets—" "I’m sorry you have to see it at all." "I had to ask, as if its presence in your mind made me draw it forth. I will help you forget it—" "There’s something very dear to me in that," he answered. "You—yes, you can make me forget it." There was a pause, and Romney laughed. "I show you things I never could show any one before," he said. "Why, a man doesn’t talk of such compunctions. I think we go about the world without telling each other—I mean the men we meet—any more than the foam of reality. A man’s woman takes everything—" "A man’s woman," she repeated. "There’s something primitive in that—and something that is ahead, too.... I don’t know exactly what thrilled me so last night as I ran after you. I believe that the patience and wonder of your staying and coming to the court each night had something to do with that primitive thing which ’a man’s woman’ suggests.... And also with the big stories of men and women as they will be lived in the future. The wonder does not pass. The thought was with me all night—as I watched near you. It made me want to ask something else—" "What—?" "It may make me seem less to you—" "That cannot be."