She hesitated, then with a dainty malice indescribable--"--Naar the Yankee Consulate?" she added calmly. Guild reddened and strolled a few steps forward, thoroughly incensed. The porter smothered a smile: "Mejuffrouw--" he began, "ga recht uit links, en den de derde Straat rechts----" "Hoe ver is het?" The porter glanced sideways and cunningly after Guild, then sank his voice: "Freule--" he began, but the girl's haughty amazement silenced him. He touched his cap and muttered in English: "Madam is known to me. The chain is long from London to Trois Fontaines. I am only another link in that chain--at madam's service." "I _am_ served--sufficiently. Find a motor cab and tell the driver to take us to the United States Consulate." The porter's visage expressed sullen curiosity: "Why," he asked in German, "does the gracious, well-born young lady desire to visit the _American_ Consulate when the German Consulate is possibly expecting her?" At that she straightened up, staring at the man out of coldly insolent eyes. "That is enough," she said. "Take our luggage to a motor cab." "To the Yankee Consulate?" "_To the Consulate of the United States!_ Do you hear? Move, then!" she said crisply. It was raining torrents; Guild held the sullen porter's umbrella while Karen entered the cab; the luggage was stowed, the vehicle wheeled out into rain-shot obscurity. Karen turned impulsively to the man beside her: "Forgive my rudeness; I am ashamed to have insulted your Consulate." He flushed, but his lips twitched humorously; "I am sure that the United States very freely forgives Fräulein Girard." "Do _you_?" "Does it matter?" he asked lightly. "Yes. Are my amends acceptable to _you_?" "Of course. But what am I--Karen----" "You are--amiable. It was very common of me." "It might have been rather common in anybody else. You couldn't be _that_. Somehow," he added, smiling, "as we say in America, you seem to get away with it, Karen." "You are very--amiable," she repeated stiffly. And constraint fell between them once more, leaving him, however, faintly amused. She _could_ be such a _little_ girl at times. And she was adorable in the rôle, though she scarcely suspected it. At the American Consulate the cab stopped and Guild turned up his coat collar and sprang out. While he was absent the girl lay back in her corner, her eyes fixed on the rain-smeared pane. She had remained so motionless for some time when a tapping at the cabin window attracted her attention. A beggar had come to the street side of the cab and was standing there, the rain beating on his upturned face. And the girl hastily drew out her purse and let down the window. Suddenly she became rigid; the beggar had said something to her under his breath. The English shilling fell from her fingers to the floor of the cab. His hand still extended in supplication, the man went on in German: "Your steamer swarmed with English spies. One of them was your stewardess."