"You thought I was the ears of the enemy, didn't you?" the girl was
asking. "You thought I was a German agent. I might have guessed! Well,
in that case it was kind of you not to hand me over to the Modane
gendarmes. I ought to thank you. But I wasn't so suspicious when they
searched your trunk and found the papers--I simply felt that they must
be crazy to think you could be a spy."
I achieved a shrug of my shoulders, a polite air of incredulity; but, to
tell the truth, I was a little less skeptical than I appeared. There was
something in her manner that by no means suggested pretense. And she
had said a true word about the occurrences on the _Re d'Italia_. If
appearances meant facts, I myself had been proved guilty up to the hilt.
"Mr. Bayne," she was saying soberly, "I should like you to believe
me--please! I am an American, and I have had cause lately to hate the
Germans; all my bonds are with our own country and with France. There is
some one very dear to me to whom this war has worked a cruel injustice.
I have come to try to help that person; and for certain reasons--I can't
explain them--I had to come in secret or not at all.
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