In vain she marshalled the circumstances about him, trying to make
herself hate him. He was a German, she told herself. He was an enemy of
her country. He lived with a man who had been proved to be a spy. He
surreptitiously associated with American naval officers. The dictograph
told her that nightly his uncle and he in the seclusion of their home
toasted America's arch enemy, the German Kaiser. More than likely, too,
her reason told her, he was a murderer. She ought to hate, to loathe, to
despise him, and yet she didn't. She liked him. Whenever he approached
she could feel her heart beating faster. She looked forward after each
meeting with him to the time when she would see him again. What, she
wondered, could be the matter with her? Assuredly she was a good
patriotic American girl. Why couldn't she hate Frederic Hoff as she knew
he ought to be hated?
She was still puzzling over her unruly heart when they reached Getty
Square, and Dean brought the motorcycle to a stop in one of the side
streets overlooking Broadway. Dismounting, he looked at his watch and
made a pretense of tinkering with the engine, while Jane kept a sharp
lookout on the main thoroughfare, by which they expected the Hoffs to
approach. Ten minutes, twenty minutes, more than half an hour they
waited, anxiously scanning each car as it passed.
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