Momentarily she seemed to be carried away by something like the fanaticism of the fervor which had at first captured her, even still held her as she recited her incredible story.

“Oh, can’t you understand?” she went on, as if to justify herself.  “The increase in armies, the frightful implements of slaughter, the total failure of the peace propaganda—­they have all defied civilization!

“And then, too, the old, red-blooded emotions of battle have all been eliminated by the mechanical conditions of modern warfare in which men and women are just so many units, automata.  Don’t you see?  To fight war with its own weapons—­that has become the only last resort.”

Her eager, flushed face betrayed the enthusiasm which had once carried her into the “Group,” as she called it.  I wondered what had brought her now to us.

“We are no longer making war against man,” she cried.  “We are making war against picric acid and electric wires!”

I confess that I could not help thinking that there was no doubt that to a certain type of mind the reasoning might appeal most strongly.

“And you would do it in war time, too?” asked Kennedy quickly.

She was ready with an answer.  “King George of Greece was killed at the head of his troops.  Remember Nazim Pasha, too.  Such people are easily reached in time of peace and in time of war, also, by sympathizers on their own side.  That’s it, you see—­we have followers of all nationalities.”

She stopped, her burst of enthusiasm spent.  A moment later she leaned forward, her clean-cut profile showing her more earnest than before.  “But, oh, Professor Kennedy,” she added, “it is working itself out to be more terrible than war itself!”

“Have any of the plans been carried out yet?” asked Craig, I thought a little superciliously, for there had certainly been no such wholesale assassination yet as she had hinted at.

She seemed to catch her breath.  “Yes,” she murmured, then checked herself as if in fear of saying too much.  “That is, I—­I think so.”

I wondered if she were concealing something, perhaps had already had a hand in some such enterprise and it had frightened her.

Kennedy leaned forward, observing the girl’s discomfiture.  “Miss Lowe,” he said, catching her eye and holding it almost hypnotically, “why have you come to see me?”

The question, pointblank, seemed to startle her.  Evidently she had thought to tell only as little as necessary, and in her own way.  She gave a little nervous laugh, as if to pass it off.  But Kennedy’s eyes conquered.

“Oh, can’t you understand yet?” she exclaimed, rising passionately and throwing out her arms in appeal.  “I was carried away with my hatred of war.  I hate it yet.  But now—­the sudden realization of what this compact all means has—­well, caused something in me to—­ to snap.  I don’t care what oath I have taken.  Oh, Professor Kennedy, you—­you must save him!”