“No. I think he got away across the roofs of the houses,” replied Neeland.
Ilse Dumont, bent over the cat in her lap, stared absently into its green eyes where it lay playfully patting the rags that hung from her torn bodice.
Perhaps she was thinking of the dead man where he lay in the crowded café—the dead man who had confronted her with bloodshot eyes and lifted pistol—whose voice, thick with rage, had denounced her—whose 406 stammering, untaught tongue stumbled over the foreign words with which he meant to send her to her death—this dead man who once had been her man—long ago—very, very long ago when there was no bitterness in life, no pain, no treachery—when life was young in the Western World, and Fate gaily beckoned her, wearing a smiling mask and crowned with flowers.
“I hope,” remarked the Princess Mistchenka, “that it is sufficiently early in the morning for you to escape observation, James.”
“I’m a scandal; I know it,” he admitted, as the car swung into the rue Soleil d’Or.
The Princess turned to the drooping girl beside her and laid a gloved hand lightly on her shoulder.
“My dear,” she said gently, “there is only one chance for you, and if we let it pass it will not come again—under military law.”
Ilse lifted her head, held it high, even tilted back a little.
The Princess said:
“Twenty-four hours will be given for all Germans to leave France. But—you took your nationality from the man you married. You are American.”