She seemed to make a rapid calculation. "If I agree to this, will you promise that she shall never know what I've gone through, this last twenty-four hours?" The handkerchief went to her lips.
"No," said Napier, sternly, "but I'll promise that I won't enlighten her before you leave."
"And Mr. Grant? If you tell _him_, you may as well tell every one. He couldn't keep anything to save his neck."
"If _you_ keep to the course I've laid down, I don't know any special reason for enlightening Mr. Grant." Napier knew that he was showing weakness over the point. Yet, after all, in a few hours the woman would be out of the country. Behind that wall of the German lines she would be lost.
By the time Julian returned to the sitting-room, Miss Greta had accepted the inevitable.
"I don't want to seem rude,"--she turned to Napier with her weary grace--"but I think I must ask to be left alone awhile. Perhaps you'll be so _very_ kind as to explain to Mr. Grant that in these circumstances of family affliction"--only Napier recognized the Adelphi touch in the phrase and in the lace-bordered handkerchief pressed to heroic lips--"the more I think of it, the more I feel it would be best for me to go home alone."
Napier went back to the hotel at five o'clock with Julian, who drove his own big car to take the three to the station. The progress was slow and penitential, for Miss Greta declined to lose sight of the two taxis which followed with the luggage. Napier, with Madge at his side, sitting opposite Nan and Miss Greta, found himself taking refuge from the unconscious reproach in Nan's face by studying the buttons on Miss Greta's ulster. There was a great many of those buttons. The immense labor of changing them induced thoughtfulness. They were thicker, but weren't the bigger ones exactly sovereign size? The smaller on collar, cuffs, and pocket-flaps--weren't they precisely of half-sovereign dimensions, excepting, again in thickness? He began to count....
"Look at that shop!" Nan leaned forward over the long narrow cardboard box she was carrying.
The front glass was smashed, the place empty. Over the door was a sign, "Zimmerman, Family Baker." A little way on stood yet another shop with demolished front. On the opposite side was a third. There were seven in all, over each a German name.