Tears did not sit well on Hildegarde von Essen; one did not expect them of her. Somehow it would have been more congruous to see her emotions using some other outlet—swearing with intent, incisive daintiness or dashing the bric-À-brac on the floor. Yet she was crying, not dismally, with girlish abandon, but with a certain dynamic intensity, a clumsiness, if you will, that bespoke neglect of practice in the accomplishment.

She had returned half an hour ago from Potter’s hangar, from listening to his claim upon her love, from feeling the demand of his arms about her, from a glad moment of surrendering her lips to his lips, and from the blind joy of translating her heart into words.... Thirsting on desert sands, she had seen in mirage a green oasis where welled up a never-failing spring of love; or, rather, it was as if she had seen a veritable oasis, a living spring, and by her own black magic had transformed it to mirage.... She had put away the man she loved and declared herself defiled!

That Potter had put upon that word a construction far different from her own she did not realize. Perhaps it would not have mattered if she had. Could one choose between defilements? It would have been impossible for her to comprehend an obscenity which would have befouled her more than her father’s treachery and treason had done.... And she wept.

It was not in her to love with reserve, mildly, sweetly, as it was not in her to live calmly, staidly, circumspectly. When she gave her love it was with fiery recklessness, holding back nothing, making no compromises ... and that love had been caught in the ruthless spring trap of a horrid reality, caught and tortured and restrained of its freedom. The fire-white cruelty of it was her knowledge that her love could not die.

Hours slipped by, one upon the heels of another, and thwarted love took for its companion fear.... Potter was in danger. She had warned him, but would her warning not bring him within the grasp of a peril he would not otherwise have approached? She knew it would. Potter was not one to leave his battles to other champions; what was his own he would defend. When those men came, bearing awful death in their hands, they would find him there. She could see him waiting.

Then the massive house shuddered, windows rattled, bits of glass tinkled to the floor, and a mighty roar swallowed up the voices of the earth.... Hildegarde uttered no cry, made no movement, but stood erect in the middle of her room, eyes staring, fists clenched. She knew! They had succeeded, the thing was done!... But Potter—had it touched him? Had it mangled, torn, killed him? She had but one thought now—she must know.

She tore open her door, rushed down the stairs and burst into her father’s library. Herman von Essen was standing in the middle of the floor, pasty-faced, unsteady, a man face to face with a vision of horror.

“What was that?” demanded Hildegarde.

Von Essen gulped, started, opened his mouth soundlessly, and then found stammering speech. “I—don’t—know,” he said.

“You lie!” she said, in a voice brittle, metallic.

He stared at her, uncomprehending, and wagged his head vaguely.

“You lie!” she repeated. “You know what it was—you know it was murder!”

“Murder....” he repeated. “No....”

“He was there,” she said. “If you’ve killed him—”

Von Essen shook himself together, peered at her dazedly, seemed to grasp a sinister knowledge in her words. “Who was where?” he snarled. “What are you talking about?”

“Potter Waite was there,” she said.

“Potter Waite!... What do you know—” He stopped, stared at her as if he had not seen her before, and his face grew livid with something menacing—the expression of a rat driven into a corner. He sprang upon her, caught her by the shoulders, shook her brutally. “What do you know?... What do you know?” he repeated, again and again.

She tore herself free, backed away from him. “I know that you are a traitor and a murderer,” she said. “I know what that explosion was.... Don’t touch me! Don’t dare come near me!”

She could not hold him off. His heavy hands clutched her again and drew her face close to his, and in his eyes she saw terror and rage glowing side by side. His voice was a snarl. “You know, do you?... You’ve been spying.... You’ve been listening.” He broke into German, searching the language for epithet and invective. Then, “You know.... Tell me what you know—everything you know.”

“I know,” she panted, “that you’re a traitor to your country, and a murderer.... I know you’re a plotter, a German spy.... I know this house is full of plots—and treason.... Your chauffeur—everybody here is in it.... That watchman at the Waite Motor Company—Philip killed him.... I know that sound was an explosion—your explosion.... And Potter Waite was there.” Her voice rose shrilly, “If you’ve killed him—”

“If I’ve killed him—what?” he said, hoarsely. “What?” He did not wait for her to answer. “What else do you know? Who else do you know?”

“I know you and I know Philip.” Her eyes defied him.

“Who else?”

“No one.”

“Are you lying?... If you lie to me—”

She laughed. “I’d lie to you till I choked with lies,” she said. “I hate you.... I despise you—my own father.... You have done this thing ... this horrible thing.... Benedict Arnold.... And you’ve defiled me—I’m of your blood ... your daughter.... Thank God mother is dead.... Yes, I’d lie to you if I had a reason. If I could only tell the world the lie that you’re not my father! You abominable, squalid traitor.... But I’m not lying to you now.... Oh, I wish I knew more of your kind.”

He roared incoherently and shook her as if she were without weight. “You know, eh?... Well, what do you intend to do about it? I’ll shut your mouth—”

“If—you’ve—killed—Potter—” she gasped.

“I’ll shut your mouth,” he repeated, and flung her into a chair. Then he pulled shut the lofty doors and paced up and down before her, muttering. She did not cower, did not show fear, but crouched there, glaring at him with burning eyes.... Ten minutes passed—fifteen.... Footsteps, unsteady, staggering, sounded in the hall. Knuckles rapped on the door.

“Who’s there?” demanded von Essen, with the catch of awakened terror in his voice.

“Me—Philip.”

Von Essen strode to the doors and flung them open. “Come in,” he snarled. “Come in....”

Philip, face blackened and bloody, stumbled into the room and stood panting.

“What is it?” von Essen demanded in German. “What’s the matter?”

Philip stared at Hildegarde and motioned. Her father turned and scowled at her. “Never mind her. She’s been spying. She knows. We’ll have to shut her mouth.... What’s wrong?”

“We set the bomb—I lighted the fuse.... They were watching the place. Somebody jumped on me. Young Waite. Weimer jumped in and we broke away. The place was full of men.... We ran. Somebody grabbed the bomb and threw it.... Weimer was fifty feet away from me—and it struck right behind him.” Philip shut his eyes and shivered. “They’ll never find a trace of him,” he said, shakily.

Hildegarde sprang toward him. “Was anybody else hurt?... Any of Potter’s men?... Potter?”

“No,” he said. “They chased us—but I got away.”

“Were you followed?” von Essen shouted. “What made you come here?”

“It was safe enough. Nobody saw me.... I couldn’t go far. When I saw that thing land I threw myself flat—but it shook me up bad.... I’ll have to lay up.” He sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands.

Hildegarde closed her eyes. “Potter’s safe!... Potter’s safe!” her heart was singing.

“We’ll get you to bed in a minute,” von Essen said, “but we’ve got to settle with this—this daughter of mine—this spy.”

Philip raised his head. “What about her?”

“She’s found out things.... We’ve got to shut her mouth.”

He caught his daughter roughly by the arm and dragged her to her feet. “You’ve meddled in something—” he began.

“Hold on,” Philip said. “You’re going at it wrong.” He turned to Hildegarde. “Miss von Essen,” he said, “you wouldn’t give your father away, would you? You wouldn’t do that?... How’d you look in court swearing away your own father’s life, eh? Think of that.... And you’ve got friends here? How’d you like to have them know? Get the idea?... We’d be tried for murder, most likely.... Want to go through life with folks pointing at you as a murderer’s daughter?”

“Traitor’s daughter!” she said, between her teeth. Then, “Are you sure Potter Waite is safe—are you sure?”

“I heard his voice shouting behind me.... Nothing touched him.” He watched her face intently, trying to read its expression, to catch some clue. “Now be reasonable.... You don’t want the world to know, eh?... Or Potter Waite to know? How’d you like for him to know your father tried to blow up his place? Wouldn’t like it, would you?” he finished, as he saw her wince.

She fixed her eyes upon her father’s lowering face. “Father,” she said, “if you’ll give it up—if you’ll promise to stop this sort of thing—and be loyal ... or, if you can’t be loyal, to stop helping Germany....”

“Sure he will,” said Philip, winking at von Essen. “We all will, Miss. Tickled to death to promise. We’re about filled up with the business, anyhow.”

“If you had killed Potter—” she said to her father.

“But we didn’t,” Philip said, quickly.

“No—you didn’t.... And he’s my father. I’ve thought of that ... night after night and day after day.... I can’t expose him.... I despise him, but even my country couldn’t ask me to expose him.”

“Huh!...” snorted von Essen.

She drooped pitifully. His brutality, the stress of the moments she had passed through, left her weak, trembling.

“Your mother used to believe in a God,” said von Essen, and there was the hint of a sneer in his voice. “Do you take it from her?”

“I believe,” she said, simply.

He strode to a bookcase, drew out a Bible, over which himself and fellow German dabblers in materialistic philosophy had wrangled, and thrust it before her. “Put your hand on it,” he ordered. “Put your hand on it and swear that you will never repeat to a human being what you know about this business.... Swear!”

She drew back from her father, recoiling from the thing he demanded of her. To her it seemed impious that her father’s hands should touch that book; blackly impious that he should drag it down into the mire of his own unholy purposes.

“No,” she whispered, “not that.... No.”

“Yes, I say.... Swear.”

Philip stepped a pace forward. “Wait,” he said. “You’re going at this like a bull. Have a little sense about it, von Essen.... Listen, Miss von Essen, this thing’s no joke to your father. You’ve scared him, and he ain’t acting right. You listen to me a minute. Here’s how we stand: If you blow on us it’s more ’n likely we dangle at the end of a rope. Just stop a minute and see if you want your father dangling from a rope.... Not so much on account of him, you understand, but on account of—your mother....” He had seen the look on Hildegarde’s face when Herman von Essen had mentioned his wife, and a keen brain lay back of his sharp eyes. “It’s her you got to think of.... If she was alive it would kill her, likely, to know her husband was hung for a spy. Now wouldn’t it? She was a good woman like you....”

“She was good ... good.”

“To be sure.... And folks thinks of her as good. You got her memory to look after, hain’t you? Well?... Wouldn’t folks begin to think things about her if the man she picked out to marry was hung, public-like, and the papers was full of him?”

She moaned and shut her eyes. She saw those papers with their screaming headlines.

“And think of you. After all, he’s your father. Nobody expects a daughter to betray her father, and nobody thinks any better of her if she does.... They’d say your father was a traitor to the country, but that you was a traitor to your own flesh and blood. I know folks, Miss von Essen, and that’s how they’d look at it. They’d point to you and say, ‘There’s the girl that got her father hung.’ And you couldn’t never bear that.... It’s a bad mess any way you look at it, and there hain’t any way out of it for you but to keep quiet.... Jest make believe you don’t know anything. You’d catch it double, Miss. Once for givin’ away your father, and once for bein’ the daughter of a spy that was hung.... Your mother would ’a’ stood by him like it was her duty to do. Bein’ as she’s gone, you’re sort of in her place....”

“Mother,” Hildegarde said, in a voice so low there was almost no sound above a breath. She bowed and touched her lips to the cold leather. “I swear,” she said.... “And now may I go? I’m—so—tired.”

“Let me help you to your room, Miss,” said Philip, but she would not let him touch her, and tottered up the stairs alone.

When she was gone von Essen turned apprehensive eyes upon his chauffeur. Philip shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t need to worry about her,” he said. “That sort of thing means a heap to a woman.... She’s safe.”