FAR in the night he said to her: “It is the only way. I shall leave you to yourself now, Frieda. The rest is with God and you. Tomorrow morning they will take you away. They may—they probably will shoot you as a spy. I cannot save you,—nothing that I can do will be of avail in turning aside or tempering the wrath of Justice.”

She sat, limply, with bowed head. Her fine body seemed to have shrivelled; emptied of its vitality, it had shrunk as with age before his eyes. Everything that had fed her blood for years seeped away, leaving a waste of sunken flesh: pride, arrogance, defiance, and, last of all, fury,—all had gone out of the house of her soul. There was nothing left but the pitiful thing called life.

She raised her eyes.

“I cannot take your way out, Davenport,” she said dully.

He pointed to the revolver he had laid on her dressing-table.

“That, Frieda, is the only friend you have in all this world tonight.”

“Oh, my God! Are you heartless? Have you no pity, no love, no—”

“I have pity,—nothing more. Love? I have given you love for twenty years and more. You have defiled it. Do not speak of love!”

“You know I love you—you know I would die for you a thousand times over. You are my man,—my master, my—”

“Enough, Frieda! You have played a great game,—but an ignoble one,—and you have lost. You have begged me to—to become your executioner. You ask me to kill you. You—”

“I do not ask it now,” she broke in, looking him full in the eye. “Go, Davenport. Leave me to myself. Thank you for—for being kind to me tonight,—after all. I have told you the truth,—you know everything that my conscience permits me to reveal. You know more than that man who sits out there like a vulture, waiting for—waiting for me. What I have confessed to you I would die a thousand times over rather than confess to another living soul. They could take me away tonight and torture me till I died, and not one word of what I have said to you would pass my lips. They know enough, but you alone know all. You say the world will never know what I have done. I do not care. Let the world know. I am proud of my blood—I rejoice in the little I have been able to do for——”

“Hush! Do not say it.”

“Very well. It hurts you. I do not want to hurt you now, husband. The world is to believe that I—that an accident—a sudden—” She buried her face in her hands. Her body shook.

“I would spare your son, Frieda,” said he.

She looked up, dry-eyed. A quick flash,—could it have been of joy?—lighted her haggard face.

“Yes, yes,—he must be spared,” she cried. A deep, inscrutable expression came into her eyes. She dre............