But just in time her part came to her and she simply stared at him a second uncomprehendingly and went on with her dishwashing, splashing around in the soapy water without regard to his fine coat; and quite naturally, as she had hoped he would do, he stepped back.

Then, horrified at Hilda's presumption, out came Mrs. Schwarz, with angry brows and mortified apologies:

“She doesn't understand the German, Captain. You'll have to excuse her; she's awful dumb, und she don't know no petter. Hilda, the gentleman is asking your name. Can't you answer him civilly?; And for mercy's sake schtop splashing him with that dirty vater!”

 Hilda, with well-feigned calmness, lifted her eyes indifferently to the man's face, then turned deliberately toward her mistress and answered quietly:

 “You will tell him, please, Mrs. Schwarz, that I am Miss Lessing.”

 Then she dropped her eyes and went on with her dishwashing, far from feeling the calmness she would have had them think she felt.

 The young German stared at her in amazement for a moment, then threw his head back and laughed. But beyond a faint pink stealing into her cheeks there was no change in the gentle dignity of the girl, though she was maintaining herself by the utmost strain of nerve and will. She felt that if she were to break down now she would never be able to protect herself against something indefinable, which was, nevertheless, very real in the atmosphere of this strange house.

She succeeded well in convincing the man that she did not understand his language. But the fineness of her was something she could not hide, not at least with her inexperience. Had she but known it, she aroused his interest far more by her gentle dignified bearing than ever she would have done if she had laughed and joked with him. He might then have gone his way and cast never a thought back to her. But it would have been as impossible for Hilda to have laughed and joked with such a man as for a flower to masquerade as an onion.

He had his laugh out now, Mrs. Schwarz joining in with a polite, bewildered cackle, but he stopped suddenly with a frown and watched the girl as she went quietly on with her work, as seemingly shut away from these two as if she had been deaf and dumb and blind. A creature of exquisite fashioning in a world of her own. Her indifference piqued his dominating spirit and made him long to subdue her to himself; to crush this beautiful dignity of maidenhood and force her to bow to him as Super-man.

 “She is very beautiful and absurdly proud, but I find her amusing,” he said to Mrs. Schwarz, and then in a tone as if he were lightly bargaining for her soul, he added lazily: “Just have it understood that she belongs to me! You understand? I may come soon again.”

Then he turned to Hilda and, in beautiful English, with all the outward courtesy of a gentleman, Said:

“I will bid you good morning, Miss Lessing! ”

In dumb amazement she stood and watched him go down the path to the barn where Schwarz and two of the other men were working over a great coil of wire. Somehow in the instant of his going it came to her like a shock: “That man is a spy!”

 Over and over she said. it to herself as she watched him standing; in the sunshine; saw the immediate attitude of salute and deference of the other two as he drew near; remembered snatches of the conversation she had overheard the night before, and took in the whole thing as a revelation.

 “That man is a spy! They are, perhaps, all spies!”

 She stood rooted to the spot where he had left her, washing and rewashing the spider in which she had cooked his sausages, and taking in the awful thought. The horror and indignation with which she had listened to his audacious and insulting order to Mrs. Schwarz concerning her were for the moment forgotten in the amazing conviction that she had discovered a spy!

Somehow her senses seemed racing around in her body in a frenzy, and she was almost blind and breathless with trying to stop them long enough to think what it all meant. So she stood and rewashed that old greasy spider till Mrs. Schwarz's rasping voice shivered on her suffering consciousness with a thrill of pain:

 “How long are you going to stand there and wash that dish, you lazy girl? Get you up the stairs and make those peds, and be quig aboud id!” she shouted. Hilda caught her breath and hurriedly finished her dishes.

Upstairs by herself, with a view out the open windows, she saw the stranger ordering everyone about. She came to herself again and began to boil with rage over the awful thing that man had dared to say about her! She belong to him! Indeed! She would rather die a thousand deaths than belong to him. She loathed and feared him with every atom of her fine sensitive being. She was convinced without knowledge or need of proof that he was a spy, a traitor to his country and a man to be despised.

 And he was coming back again! Oh, horror! Somehow she must get away before he came! She must not stay in this house another day!

 It came to her that he was not yet gone. He might return to the house again. She could see him standing now between the cabbage plants, pointing to the little tool house made of bricks with an iron door. Then there flashed across her mind what he had said about the powder house. Powder and dynamite! Why should they need such things on a truck farm? She had always connected them with a red flag and blasting on a city street.