"I don't know whether you'll call it news or not, though plenty of
things have happened. I'm awfully sorry to be late--"
I wouldn't let him finish, standing there, but took him by the arm and
drew him into the garden, pushing the gate shut behind him as I did so.
Yet I forgot to lock it, and naturally it did not occur to Ivor that it
ought to be fastened.
Once inside, in the garden, I was going to make him begin again, as I
had told Marianne I would. But suddenly I bethought myself that he might
have been followed; that there might be watchers behind that high wall,
watchers who would try to be listeners too, and whose ears would be very
different from old Henri's. "Come into the house," I said, in a low
voice, "before you begin to tell anything." Then, when we were inside, I
could not even wait for him to go on of his own accord and in his own
way.
"The treaty?" I asked. "Have you got hold of it?"
"Unfortunately, no."
"But you've heard of it? Oh, _say_ you've heard something!"
"If I haven't, it isn't because I've sat down and waited for news to
come. I went back to the Gare du Nord after you left me, to try and get
on the track of the men who travelled with me in the train to Dover.
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