Guild, tall, broad-shouldered, erect, stood by the window looking out between the gently blowing sash-curtains, and fastening his waistcoat. And, standing so, he said: "Harry, this is no place for Mrs. Courland and her daughter. They ought to go to Luxembourg City, or across the line into Holland. As a matter of fact they really ought to go back to America." "I think so too," nodded Darrell. "I think we may persuade them to come back with us." Without looking at his business partner and friend, Guild said: "I am not going back with you." "What!" "I can't. But you must go--rather soon, too. And you must try to persuade the Courlands to go with you." "What are you planning to do?" demanded Darrel with the irritable impatience of a man who already has answered his own question. "You can guess, I suppose?" "Yes, dammit!--I can! I've been afraid you'd do some such fool thing. And I ask you, Kervyn, as a sane, sensible Yankee business man, _is_ it necessary for you to gallop into this miserable free fight and wallow in it up to your neck? Is it? Is it necessary to propitiate your bally ancestors by pulling a gun on the Kaiser and striking an attitude?" Guild laughed. "I'm afraid it's a matter of propitiating my own conscience, Harry. I'm afraid I'll have to strike an attitude and pull that gun." "To the glory of the Gold Book and the Counts of Gueldres! _I_ know! You're very quiet about such things, but I knew it was inside you all the time. Confound it! I was that worried by your letter to me! I thought you'd already done something and had been caught." "I hadn't been doing anything, but I _had_ been caught." "I knew it!" "Naturally; or I shouldn't have written you a one-act melodrama instead of a letter.... Did you destroy the letter to my mother?" "Yes, I did." "That was right. I'll tell you about it some time. And now, before we go down, this is for your own instruction: I am going to try to get into touch with the Belgian army. How to do it I don't see very clearly, because there are some two million Germans between me and it. But that's what I shall try to do, Harry. So, during the day or two I remain here, persuade your friends, the Courlands, of the very real danger they run in remaining at Lesse. Because any of these peasants at any moment are likely to sally forth Uhlan sniping. And you know what German reprisals mean." "Yes," said Darrel uneasily. He added with a boyish blush: "I'm rather frightfully fond of Valentine Courland, too." "Then talk to the Courlands. Something serious evidently has happened to their landlord. If he made himself personally obnoxious to the soldiery which destroyed Wiltz-la-Vallée, a detachment might be sent here anyway to destroy Lesse Lodge. You can't tell what the Teutonic military mind is hatching. I was playing chess when they were arranging a shooting party in my honour. Come on downstairs." "Yes, in a minute. Kervyn, I don't believe you quite got me--about Valentine Courland."