our secret service can only work underneath. You can see for yourself
the advantage we gain in having a confidential correspondent who can day
by day reflect the changing psychology of the British mind in all its
phases. We have quite enough of the other sort of help arranged for.
Plans of ships, aerodromes and harbours, sailings of convoys, calling up
of soldiers--all these are the A B C of our secret service profession.
We shall never ask our friend here for a single fact, but, from his town
house in Berkeley Square, the host of Cabinet Ministers, of soldiers, of
the best brains of the country, our fingers will never leave the pulse
of Britain's day by day life."

Stephanie threw herself back in her easy-chair and clasped her hands
behind her head.

"These things you are expecting from our present host?"

"We are, and we expect to get them. I have watched him day by day. My
confidence in him has grown."

Stephanie was silent. She sat looking into the fire. Seaman, keenly
observant as always, realised the change in her, yet found something of
mystery in her new detachment of manner.

"Your Highness," he urged, "I am not here to speak on behalf of the man
who at heart is, I know, your lover. He will plead his own cause when
the time comes. But I am here to plead for patience, I am here to
implore you to take no rash step, to do nothing which might imperil in
any way his position here. I stand outside the gates of the world which
your sex can make a paradise. I am no judge of the things that happen
there. But in your heart I feel there is bitterness, because the man