She made no sign that she had heard me speak. The car whirred through the dusk, while we sat silent and aloof from each other. It was a return very different from that which I had hoped for when I set out. I was almost glad when, further down the loch, the beams of the head-lights showed us the figure of Nordenholt in the road. I pulled up the car beside him; and Elsa leaned forward in her seat. “Uncle Stanley, Mr. Flint has told me everything. I saw a document this morning, B. 53. X. 15; and I forced Mr. Flint to explain what it meant. Did you really plan this awful thing?” I could not see Nordenholt’s face in the shadow; but his voice was as steady as ever in his reply. Afterwards I realised that he must have foreseen such a situation as this long before. “It is perfectly true, Elsa. Anything that Mr. Flint has told you is probably correct, though his connection with the matter is very slight.” “But he says that you planned it all and that he helped you. I can’t ... I can’t quite understand it all. It’s a mistake, isn’t it? It’s not your real plan, surely. You’re going to save all these people in the South, aren’t you?” “Every soul that can be saved by me will be saved, Elsa. You can count on that.” “But you will give them all a chance of life, won’t you? You won’t take away all the food from them?” “There’s no food to spare.” For a few moments there was silence. Elsa made a sudden movement, and I guessed that she had recoiled from Nordenholt’s touch. At last she spoke again, in a way I had not anticipated. “Do you remember my three wishes, Uncle Stanley? You gave me two of them and now I want the third. You promised me the whole three; and you never broke your word yet. I want you to save these people in the South. That’s my third wish.” I think it was that which made me realise the gulf that yawned between us, more than anything that had gone before. How could she imagine that Nordenholt’s vast machine could be deflected on account of some childish promise? And yet her voice had taken on a new tone of confidence; everything, she thought, was going to be set right. It seems she must have believed, even then, that the treatment of the South was only one of a number of alternative schemes; and that she could force the adoption of some other, not so good, perhaps, but still possible, as a solution. Her very belief in Nordenholt’s powers led her to assume that he must have several plans ready pigeon-holed, and that the rejection of one merely entailed the substitution of some other which was already cut and dried. “When that promise was made, Elsa, there was one condition: your wish was not to be an impossible one. This _is_ impossible.” “Oh!” There was such an agony in her voice that I felt it rasp my already over-tried nerves. “That is final, Elsa. There is nothing more to be said.”