"No, she does."
My uncle smiled beneficently.
"That's all right, old fellow," said he, "and I'll intimate as much to her father. Come on! Now you've shaved, what are you waiting for?"
"Your blessing, sir; but I'm ready now."
The very weather was encouraging, for the wind had fallen considerably, and it was just cold enough to make us step out over the frozen road in bursting spirits. My uncle literally whistled several times, and once he remarked à propos of nothing:
"I've always admired that type myself!"
On what decent pretext I managed to get Jean out of the library within two minutes of her entrance with her father, or whether it actually was decent, my memory is a blank. I knew she loved me because she came out with me so quickly, and she knew my heart because I asked her to. And as we both had really known the night before, there scarcely needed a question to be asked and answered. And that is the end of Jean's and my part in the story.
* * * * *
As for that brave, brutal and extraordinary man who had masqueraded as an imbecile for two whole years to serve the ambitions of his country, playing the part of a kind of isolated living base for the German Navy, as a spy, as a destroyer, and as a murderer, I have never learned his name or his past history to this day. After his first outburst of blasphemy, I believe he kept doggedly silent up to his speedy end. He lived and died like a savage, cunning, carnivorous beast; or, in other words, like his masters who employed him.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Man From the Clouds, by J. Storer Clouston