e city as a
passport at once lulls any doubt that might arise otherwise.

Moreover, Joan and Felix occupied separate carriages, and the Belgrade
officials, concerned only with the examination of tickets, gave no heed
to them, though one man seemed to recognize Felix and grinned in a
friendly way. Passport formalities did not trouble them till the train
had crossed the Tave River and was already in Austrian territory. The
frontier officers could not possibly know them. Their papers were in
order, and received only a passing glance. Even Joan, adrift in a sea of
trouble, saw that it was a far easier matter to leave the Balkan area
than to enter it.

They arranged to meet in the dining saloon, when all necessity for
further precaution would have disappeared. Felix was astounded at the
self possession Joan now displayed. She was pale but quite calm. Her
eyes were clear and showed no traces of grief. Even her very manner was
reverting to that good humored tone of frank camaraderie that the
unavoidable ceremoniousness of the last fortnight had kept in
subjection. Felix was secretly amazed at these things; but in the depths
of his own complex nature were hidden away, wholly unknown to the little
hunchback himself, certain feminine characteristics which enabled him
dimly to understand that the woman who suffers most is she who has the
strength and the courage to carry her head most proudly before the
storm.

"Well," said he when the mail train had left Semlin far behind and they
were speeding northward through the night to Budapest,--"well, Joan, now
that the severance is complete, do you still refuse me your confidence?"

Her luminous eyes dwelt on his with a sad smile. She had closed the
gates of her paradise, and there was to be no faint hearted looking
backward.

"No," she said, "I have attained my end. It is due to you, my friend,
that I should tell you why I have abandoned the only man I shall ever
love. It lay with me to choose between his success or failure; perhaps
there rested on my frail shoulders the more dreadful issues of life and
death. If I had married Alec, I should have pulled him down to ruin,
even to the grave. What else would you have me do but save him, no
matter what the cost to myself?"

He propped his chin on his hands and surveyed her quizzically. Felix,
despite his protests, was not enamoured of Delgratz, and his mercurial
temperament rejoiced in the near approach of his beloved Paris.

"All