d sleep, and heavily. She will always deny it, I know, but I'm
sure she must have slyly slipped a sleeping-powder into the chocolate. I
was far too much occupied with my own thoughts, as I drank to please
her, to think whether or no there was anything at all peculiar in the
taste.

Be that as it may, I slept; and when I waked suddenly, starting out of a
hateful dream (yet scarcely worse than realities), to my horror it was
nearly noon.

I was wild with fear lest the servants, in their stupid but well-meant
wish not to disturb me, might have sent important visitors away.
However, when Marianne came flying in, in answer to my long peal of the
electric bell, she said that no one had been. There were letters and one
telegram, and all the morning papers, as usual after the first night of
a new play.

My heart gave a spring at the news that there was a telegram, for I
thought it might be from Ivor, saying he was on the track of the treaty,
even if he hadn't yet got hold of it. But the message was from Raoul;
and he had not found the brocade bag. He did not put this in so many
words, but said, "I have not found what was lost, or learned anything of
it."

From Ivor there was not a line, and I thought this cruel. He might have
wired, or written me a note, even if there were nothing definite to say.
He might, unless--something had happened to him. There was that to think
of; and I did think of it, with dread, and a growing presentiment that I
had not suffered yet all I was to suffer. I determined to send a servant
to the Elysee Palace Hotel to enquire for him, and despatched Henri
immediately. Meanwhile, as there was nothing to do, after pretending to
eat breakfast under the watchful eyes of Marianne, I pretended also to
read the newspaper notices of the play. But each sentence went out of my
head before I had begun the next. I knew in the end only that, according
to all the critics, Maxine de Renzie had "surpassed herself," had been
"astonishingly great," had done "what no woman could do unless she threw
her whole soul into her part." How little they knew where Maxine de
Renzie's soul had been last night! And--only God knew where it might be
this night. Out of her body, perhaps--the one way of escape from Raoul's
hatred, if he had come to know the truth.

Of course the enquiry at the hotel was not for Ivor Dundas, but for the
name he had adopted there; yet when my servant came back to me he had
nothing to tell which was co