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though, if you're trying to frighten me." "I'm afraid, you know, I have somehow done that already. You sounded rattled when we talked on the phone." "You ring up like the Gestapo," she said with a laugh or yawn. "That would be just the impression I'd hate to give you.--Then, you haven't a thing in the world to be frightened of?" "Who would dare say that these days?" She, sitting bolt upright, paused, moulding the stuff of her dress over one knee. "Obviously," she went on, "only a fool would say so at any time at all. Who has not got fears? However, one learns to say, 'Such things do not happen.' " "Ah, but they do." She raised her eyes. He said: "Only look round you." "Yes, the war. I had been thinking of life in general." "What's the difference? War, if you come to think of it, hasn't started anything that wasn't there already--what it does is, put the other lot of us in the right. You, I mean to say, have got along on the assumption that things don't happen; I, on the other hand, have taken it that things happen rather than not. Therefore, what you see now is what I've seen all along. I wouldn't say that puts me at an advantage, but I can't help feeling 'This is where I come in.' " "In other words, this is a crooks' war?" "I shouldn't call it that. It's a war, of course; but for me the principal thing is that it's a time when I'm not a crook. For me there've been not so good times when I did seem to be a bit out in my calculations, so you must see how where I'm concerned things have taken a better turn: everything about adds up to what I made it." "What you wanted to tell me, then, was about yourself?" Harrison apparently could not blush, but in a flash his face took on the expression that in other faces goes with a change of colour, a chagrined rise of blood. "In fact, not.--Sorry," he shortly said. "As a rule myself s not one of my topics; it only ever could be if it ever interested you--which _could__, you know, happen," he added, frowning again. "Is it so odd I should want a place of my own?" "What seems to me most odd is the way you expect to make one." He, as though directed by some involuntary thought of hers, turned to stare at the back of the reversed photograph. "You'd feel bad about him, sore about him?" he said. "In that case, I ought to tell you--worse could happen to him than saying goodbye to you." "Oh, I expect so," said Stella with her most idle air. She soon, however, dropped into staring at him with an accumulation of weariness, distaste, mistrust, boredom, most of all the strain of her own sustained ungentleness and forced irony. Hesitating, he touched his moustache--as though it concealed a spring which could make his mouth fly open on something final. She was looked at narrowly. "A lot could happen to him," he said. She made no observation. He went on: "At any moment--which would be too bad, eh? As against which, it might not. If you and I could arrange things, things might be arranged." "I don't follow you." "The fact is, our friend's been playing the fool. _Is__ playing the fool, I should say, for all he's worth." She said sharply: "Is he in a mess about money?" "Not so simple as that. You may find this far from being a pretty story. Want it?" "Just as you like." Harrison cleared his throat. "For reasons you'll see," he said, "I can't tell you the whole thing. In fact, if we'd got the whole thing he would not still be where he is--however, there still is something we're working on. He's, as you know, at the War Office--that's probably all you do know: we've no reason to think that in any social relations he's not been ordinarily discreet. _You__ may have some rough idea what he's doing, but I should doubt that he's ever given you more. Unfortunately he's giving considerably more in another direction. We've traced a leak--shortly, the gist of the stuff he handles is getting through to the enemy. For a good bit of time this has been suspected; now it's established, known." "This is silly," she