No Man's Land

this man Blackstock would be announced before long."

That out bluntly, he caught a long breath and, divided between fear and faith, sat watching her. The passing street lights touched her face and figure strangely with fitful wheeling rays, swiftly abrupted but more or less continuous, affording him broken, unsatisfactory glimpses of her, as if through the medium of a cinematograph running at low speed. He could see, however, that she was sitting straight and rigid, no longer relaxed at ease, no longer smiling, but rather with a face set away from him, its pure young profile gleaming in the half-light like ivory against the dark.

The seconds of her silence spun for him an hour of anguish.

"Katherine..."

She turned. "Yes?"

"Have you nothing to say?" he asked involuntarily, and at once regretted it.

"What do you wish me to say?" Her tone was dull, as if she spoke mechanically, with a mind detached.

"Either affirm or deny. You owe me that, at least."

"Do I