it me to speak of
myself as your 'intimate friend' when I have done what I hope to do for
you in--in the matter of a certain document which has disappeared."

I was quivering all over. But I had not lost hope yet; I think that some
women, feeling as I did, would have fainted. But it would have been
better for me to die and be out of my troubles for ever, than to let
myself faint and show Godensky that he had struck home.

"Be quiet. Be cool. Be brave now, if never again," I said to myself. And
my voice sounded perfectly natural as I exclaimed: "Oh, the 'document'
again. The one you spoke about when we first met to-night. You rouse my
curiosity. But I don't in the least know what you mean."

"The loss of it is known," he said.

"Ah, it's a lost document?"

"As you will be lost, Maxine, if you don't come to me for the help I'm
only too glad to give--on conditions. Let me tell you what they are."

"Wouldn't it be more to the point if you told me what the document is,
and how it concerns me?" I parried him, determined to bring him to bay.

"Aren't _you_ evading the point far more than I? The document--which you
and I can both see as plainly before our eyes at this instant as though
it were in--let us say your hands, or--du Laurier's, if he were
here--that document is far too important even to name within hearing of
other ears."

"Marianne's? But I told you she can't understand a word of Russian."

"One can't be sure. We can never tell, in these days, who may not be--a
spy."

There was a stab for me! But I would not give him the satisfaction of
showing that it hurt. He wanted to confuse me, to put me off my guard;
but he should not.

"They say one judges others by one's self," I laughed. "Count Godensky,
if you throw out such lurid hints about my poor, fat Marianne, I shall
begin to wonder if it's not _you_ who are the spy!"

"Since you trust your woman so implicitly, then," he went on, "I'll tell
you what you want to know. The document I speak of is the one you took
out of the Foreign Office the other day, when you called on
your--friend, Monsieur le Vicomte du Laurier."

"Dear me!" I exclaimed. "You say you want to be my friend, yet you seem
to think I am a kleptomaniac. I can't imagine what I should want with
any dry old document out of the Foreign Office, can you?"

"Yes, I can imagine," said Godensky drily.

"Pray tell me then. Also what document it was. For, joking apart, this
is rather a serious accu