"I cannot delay," he said. "It is not my desire to use the force at my command. Being in England, and you being a woman, discussion has been permitted. You will now choose definitely, within one minute, whether you will submit to the orders of Berlin, or resist them. I am considering your convenience. It is immaterial to me which course you adopt." He held the watch in the palm of his hand, and his eyes were bent upon its face, marking the progress of the second hand. The influence of his attitude was tremendous. He was a perfect master of the methods which he represented. No one could have observed him and failed to realize that here was a man who, with the same extraordinary callousness, could easily have stepped to the side of a fainting woman, and, without a qualm, have placed the muzzle of a revolver to her temple and blown her brains out, as had been done in Belgium. Vita watched him, fascinated and terrified. The silent moments slipped away with the inevitability which no human power can stay. Von Berger looked up. The measure of his eyes was coldly calculating. "You have ten seconds," he said, and returned to his contemplation of the moving hand. The strain was unendurable. Vita felt that she must scream. Her will was yielding before the moral terror this man inspired. There was no hope of help. No hope anywhere. The fire shook down, and she started, her nerves on edge. She glanced over at Von Salzinger. Instantly his features stirred to that meaning expression of sympathy. Now, however, it only revolted her, and, as though drawn by a magnet, her eyes came back to the bent head of Von Berger. Simultaneously the man looked up and snapped his watch closed and returned it to his pocket. "Well?" he demanded, and the whole expression of him had changed. Vita saw the tigerish light suddenly leap into his eyes. The man was transfigured. She warned herself he was no longer a man. She could only regard him as something in the nature of a human tiger. "I will go," she said, in a voice rendered thick by her terror-parched throat. "Ja wohl!" Von Berger turned and signed to his confederate. CHAPTER XX BAR-LEIGHTON The face that gazed out at the driving October rain was one whose expression of unrelieved misery and hopelessness might well have melted a heart of flint. The wide, grey eyes had lost their languorous melting delight, which had been replaced by one of driven desperation. Dark, unhealthy rings had sunk their way into the young surrounding flesh. They were the rings of sleeplessness, and an ominous indication of the mental attitude behind them. The oval of the cheeks had become pinched and pale, while the drooping lips added a pathos that must have been irresistible to a heart of human feeling.