"I will not talk of these things with you," she cried. "It was not for this that you sought me out, eh? Tell me at once? Were these the thoughts you had in your mind when you sent your little note?--when you chose to show yourself once more in my life?" For the first time of his own accord, he drew his chair a little nearer to hers. He took her hand. She gave him both unresistingly. "Listen, dear Sonia," he said, "it is true that I am a changed man. I am older than when we met last, and there are the other things. You remember the Chateau d'Albert?" "Of course!" she murmured. "And the young Duc d'Albert's wonderful house party. We all motored there from Paris. You and I were together! You have forgotten that, eh?" "I lay in that orchard for two days," he went on grimly, "with a hole in my side and one leg pretty nearly done for. I saw things I can never forget, in those days, Sonia. D'Albert himself was killed. It was in that first mad rush. Of the Chateau there remains but four blackened walls." "_Pauvre enfant_!" she murmured. "But you are well and strong again now, is it not so? You will not fight again, eh? You were never a soldier, dear friend." "Just now," he confided, "I have other work to do. It is that other work which has brought me to America." She drew him a little closer to her. Her eyes questioned him. "There is, perhaps, now," she asked, "a woman in your life?" "There is," he admitted. She made a grimace. "But how clumsy to tell me, even though I asked," she exclaimed. "What is she like? ... But no, I do not wish to hear of her! If she is all the world to you, why did you send me that little note? Why are you here?" "Because we were once dear friends, Sonia," he said, "because I wish to save you from great trouble." She shrank from him a little fearfully. "What do you mean?" "Sonia," he continued, with a note of sternness in his tone, "during the last two years you have gone back and forth between New York and Paris, six times. I do not think that you can make that journey again." She was standing now, with one hand gripping the edge of the table. "John! ... John! ... What do you mean?" she demanded, and this time her own voice was hard. "I mean," he said, "that when you leave here for Paris you will be watched day and night. The moment you set foot upon French soil you will be arrested and searched. If anything is found upon you, such as a message from your friend in Washington--well, you know what it would mean. Can't you see, you foolish child, the risk you have been running? Would you care to be branded as a spy?--you, a daughter of France?" She struck at him. Her lace sleeves had fallen back, and her white arm, with its little clenched fist, flashed through the twilight, aimlessly yet passionately. "You dare to call me a spy! You, John?" she shrieked. "But it is horrible."