out doubt, she was beautiful to one who understood, beautiful in
a strange, colorless, feline fashion, the beauty of soft limbs, soft
movements, a caressing voice, with always the promise beyond of more
than the actual words. Her eyes now were closed, her face was a little
weary. Did she really rest, Peter wondered? He watched the rising and
falling of her bosom, the quivering now and then of her eyelids. She had
indeed the appearance of a woman who had suffered.

The car rushed on into the darkness. Behind them lay that restless
phantasmagoria of lights streaming to the sky. In front, blank space.
Peter, through half-closed eyes, watched the woman by his side. From
the moment of her entrance into his library, he had summed her up in
his mind with a single word. She was, beyond a doubt, an adventuress. No
woman could have proposed the things which she had proposed, who was
not of that ilk. Yet for that reason it behooved them to have a care in
their dealings with her. At her instigation they had set out upon this
adventure, which might well turn out according to any fashion that she
chose. Yet without Bernadine what could she do? She was not the woman
to carry on the work which he had left behind, for the love of him. Her
words had been frank, her action shameful but natural. Bernadine
was dead and she had realized quickly enough the best market for his
secrets. In a few days' time his friends would have come and she would
have received nothing. He told himself that he was foolish to doubt her.
There was not a flaw in the sequence of events, no possible reason for
the suspicions which yet lingered at the back of his brain. Intrigue,
it was certain, was to her as the breath of her body. He was perfectly
willing to believe that the death of Bernadine would have affected her
little more than the sweeping aside of a fly. His very common sense bade
him accept her story.

By degrees he became drowsy. Suddenly he was startled into a very
wide-awake state. Through half-closed eyes he had seen Sogrange draw
a sheet of paper from his pocket, a gold pencil from his chain, and
commence to write. In the middle of a sentence, his eyes were abruptly
lifted. He was looking at the Baroness. Peter, too, turned his head;
he, also, looked at the Baroness. Without a doubt, she had been watching
both of them. Sogrange's pencil continued its task, only he traced
no more characters. Instead, he seemed to be sketching a face, which
presently h