nly a woman, he'd argued, no
doubt--an emotional woman, already wrought up to a high pitch of nervous
excitement. Perhaps he had expected to have easy work with me. And I
don't think that my silence after his last words discouraged him. He
imagined me writhing at the alternative of giving up Raoul or seeing him
ruined, and he believed that he knew me well enough to be sure what I
would do in the end.

"Well?" he said at last, quite gently.

My eyes had been bent on my lap, but I glanced suddenly up at him, and
saw his face in the light of the street lamps as we passed. Count
Godensky is not more Mephistophelian in type than any other dark, thin
man with a hook nose, keen eyes, heavy browed; a prominent chin and a
sharply waxed, military moustache trained to point upward slightly at
the ends. But to my fancy he looked absolutely devilish at that moment.
Still, I was less afraid of him than I had been since the day I stole
the treaty.

"Well," I said slowly, "I think it's time that you left me now."

"That's your answer? You can't mean it."

"I do mean it, just as much as I meant to refuse you the three other
times that you did me the same honour. You asked me to hear what you had
to say to-night, and I have heard it; so there's no reason why I
shouldn't press the electric bell for my chauffeur to stop, and--"

"Do you know that you're pronouncing du Laurier's doom, to say nothing
of your own?"

"No. I don't know it."

"Then I haven't made myself clear enough."

"That's true. You haven't made yourself clear enough."

"In what detail have I failed? Because--".

"In the detail of the document. I've told you I know nothing about it.
You've told me you know everything. Yet--"

"So I do."

"Prove that by saying what it is--to satisfy my curiosity."

"I've explained why I can't do that--here."

"Then why should you stay here longer, since that is the point, to my
mind. You understood before you came into my carriage that I had no
intention of letting you go all the way home with me."

Count Godensky suddenly laughed. And the laugh frightened me--frightened
me horribly, just as I had begun to have confidence in myself, and feel
that I had got the best of the game.

CHAPTER XI

MAXINE OPENS THE GATE FOR A MAN

"You are afraid that du Laurier may find out," he said. "But he knows
already."

"Knows what?"

"That I expected to have the privilege of going to your house with you."

All that I had