h me? Raoul was coming to me after my death scene on the stage.
At the very least, he would expect to put me into my carriage when I
left the theatre, even if he went no further. Yet there would be
Godensky, waiting, and Raoul would see him. What could I do to escape
from such an _impasse_?

CHAPTER IX

MAXINE GIVES BACK THE DIAMONDS

I tried to answer the question, to decide something; but my brain felt
dead. "I can't think now. I must trust to luck--trust to luck," I said
to myself, desperately, as Marianne dressed me. "By and by I'll think it
all out."

But after that my part gave me no more time to think. I was not Maxine
de Renzie, but Princess Helene of Hungaria, whose tragic fate was even
more sure and swift than miserable Maxine's. When Princess Helene had
died in her lover's arms, however (died as Maxine had not deserved to
die), and I was able to pick up the tangled threads of my own life,
where I'd laid them down, the questions were still crying out for
answer, and must somehow be decided at once.

First, there was Raoul to be put off and got out of the way--Raoul, my
best beloved, whose help and protection I needed so much, yet must
forego, and hurt him instead.

The stage-door keeper had orders to let him "come behind," and so he was
already waiting at the door of my little boudoir by the time Helene had
died, the curtain had gone down, and Maxine de Renzie had been able to
leave the stage.

As we went together into the room, he caught both my hands, crushing
them tightly in his, and kissing them over and over again. But his face
was pale and sad, and a new fear sprang up in my heart, like a sudden
live flame among red ashes.

"What is it, Raoul?--why do you look like that?" I asked; while inside
my head another question sounded like a shriek. "What if some word had
come to him in the theatre--about the treaty?"

Then I could have cried as a child cries, with the snapping of the
tension, when he answered: "It was only that terrible last scene,
darling. I've seen you die in other parts. But it never affected me like
this. Perhaps it's because you didn't belong to me in those days. Or is
it that you were more realistic in your acting to-night than ever
before? Anyway, it was awful--so horribly real. It was all I could do to
sit still and not jump out of the box to save you. Prince Cyril was a
poor chap not to thwart the villain. I should have killed him in the
third act, and then Helene mi