believe
you?"

"You are wise," I answered, as firmly as if I deserved the full faith I
was claiming from him as my right. "If you wouldn't believe, without my
insisting, without my explaining and defending myself, I'd tell you
nothing. But you _do_ believe, just because you love me--I see it in
your face, and thank God for it. So I'll tell you this. Count Godensky
hates me, because I couldn't and wouldn't love him, and he hates you
because he thinks I love you. He--" I paused for a second. A wild
thought had flashed like the light of a beacon in my brain. If I could
say something now which, when the blow fell--if it did fall--might come
back to Raoul's mind and convince him instantly that it was Godensky,
not I, who had stolen the treaty and broken him! If I could make him
believe the whole thing a monstrous plot of Godensky's to revenge
himself on a woman who'd refused him, by cleverly implicating her in her
lover's ruin, by throwing guilt upon her while she was, in reality,
innocent! If I could suggest that to Raoul now, while his ears were
open, I might hold his love against the world, no matter what happened
afterward.

It was a mad idea and a wicked one, perhaps; but I was at my wits' end
and desperate. Though not guilty of this one crime which I would shift
upon his shoulders if I could, as a means of escaping from the trap he'd
helped to set, Godensky was capable of it, and guilty of others, I was
sure, which had never been brought home to him. I believed that he, too,
was a spy, just as I was; and far worse, because if he were one he
betrayed his own country, while I never had done that, never would.

All these thoughts rushed through my head in a second; and I think that
Raoul could hardly have noticed the pause before I began to speak again.

"He--Godensky--would do anything to part you and me," I said. "There's
no plot too sly and vile for him to conceive and carry out against
me--and you. No lie too base for him to tell you--or others--about me.
He sent me a letter at the theatre--soon after you'd left me the first
time. In it, he said that I must give him a few minutes after the play,
unless I wanted some dreadful harm to come to _you_--something
concerning your career. That frightened me, though I might have guessed
it was only a trick. Indeed, I did guess, but I couldn't be sure, so I
saw him. I didn't want you to know--I tell you that frankly, Raoul.
Because I'd told you not to come home with me, I