Stewart, “I have a passport. Unfortunately, it is for myself alone. Never having had a wife——”

But she was standing before him, her hands outstretched, tremulous with eagerness.

“Let me see it!” she cried. “Oh, let me see it!”

He got it out, gave it to her, and watched her as she unfolded it. Here was a woman, he told himself, such as he had never met before—a woman of verve, of fire——

She was looking up at him with flaming eyes.

“Mr. Stewart,” she said, in a low voice, “you can save me, if you will.”

“Save you?” echoed Stewart. “But how?”

She held the open passport toward him.

[Pg 65]

[Pg 65]

“See, here, just below your name, there is a blank space covered with little parallel lines. If you will permit me to write in that space the words ‘accompanied by his wife,’ I am saved. The passport will then be for both of us.”

“Or would be,” agreed Stewart, dryly, “if you were my wife. As it happens, you are not!”

“It is such a little thing I ask of you,” she pleaded. “We go to the station together—we take our seats in the train—at the frontier you show your passport. An hour later we shall be at Liège, and there our ways will part; but you will have done a noble action.”

There was witchery in her eyes, in her voice. Stewart felt himself slipping—slipping; but he caught himself in time.

“I am afraid,” he said, gently, “that you will have to tell me first what it is all about.”

“I can tell you in a word,” she answered, drawing very near to him, and speaking almost in a whisper. “I am a Frenchwoman.”

“But surely,” Stewart protested, “the Germans will not prevent your return to France! Why should they do that?”

“It is not a question of returning, but of escaping. I am an 

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