Polly didn't want any one to look up and see she had been crying. So she
retreated a little way into the room. Then she went over and poured some
water from the queer-shaped jug into the narrow, deep basin, which was
so unlike a nice big wide English basin. After that she washed her face,
and dabbed her eyes with eau-de-Cologne.

Manfred, who was so economical about most things, and who even grudged
her spending more than a certain sum on necessary household cleaning
implements, was very fond of scent, and he had quite a row of
scent-bottles and pomades on his side of the washhand-stand....

While Polly was dabbing her eyes and face she looked meditatively at the
big safe in the corner.

With that safe was connected her one real bit of deceit. Manfred thought
she didn't know what was in the safe, but as a matter of fact she knew
what was safely put away there as well as he did. Amazing to relate,
she actually had a key to the safe of which he, her husband, knew
nothing.

It had fallen out in this wise. The gentleman who had come from London
to superintend the fixing of the safe had left an envelope for Manfred,
or rather he had asked for an envelope, then he had popped inside it a
piece of paper and something else.

"Look here, Mrs. Hegner!" he had exclaimed. "I can't wait to see your
husband, for I've got to get my train back to town. Will you just give
him this? Many people only provide two keys to a safe, but our firm
always provides three."

She had waited till the man had gone, and then she had at once gone
upstairs and locked herself into her bedroom with the new safe and the
open envelope containing the receipted bill and the three keys. One of
these keys she had put in her purse, and then she had placed the bill,
and the two remaining keys, in a fresh envelope.

Polly didn't consider husbands and wives ought to have any secrets from
one another. But from the very first, even when Manfred was still very
much in love with her--aye, and very jealous of her too, for the matter
of that--he had never told her anything.

For a long time she hadn't known just where to keep her key of the safe,
and it had lain on her mind like a great big load of worry; she had felt
obliged to be always changing the place where she hid it.

Then, suddenly, Manfred had presented her with an old-fashioned rosewood
dressing-case he had taken from some one in part payment of a small
debt. And in this dressing-case, so a friend had