omeone was
there!--on the watch!--Leopold!

She smothered a scream of terror and in a moment had fled back into the
room and slammed and bolted the door behind her. Now she stood with her
back against it, arms outstretched, fingers twitching convulsively
against the wood. She was shivering as with cold, though the heat in the
room was close and heavy with fumes of wine and tobacco: her teeth were
chattering, a cold perspiration had damped the roots of her hair.

She had wanted to call Andor back, just to ask him definitely if he had
been successful in his errand and what he had done with the key. Perhaps
he meant to tell her; perhaps he had merely forgotten to put the key on
the tray, and still had it in his waistcoat pocket; she had been a fool
not to come out and speak to him when she heard his voice in the
tap-room awhile ago. She had wanted to, but her father monopolized her
about his things for the journey. He had been exceptionally querulous
to-night and was always ready to be suspicious; also Bela had been in
the tap-room with Andor, and she wouldn't have liked to speak of the key
before Bela. What she had been absolutely sure of, however, until now
was that Andor would not have come back and then gone away like this, if
he had not succeeded in his errand and got her the key from Count Feri.

But the key was not there: there was no getting away from that, and she
had wanted to call Andor back and to ask him about it--and had found
Leopold Hirsch standing out there in the dark . . . watching.

She had not seen him--but she had felt his presence--and she was quite
sure that she had heard the hissing sound of his indrawn breath and the
movement which he had made to spring on her--and strangle her, as he had
threatened to do--if she went out by the front door.

Mechanically she passed her hand across her throat. Terror--appalling,
deadly terror of her life--had her in its grasp. She tottered across
the room and sank into a chair. She wanted time to think.

What had Andor done? What a fool she had been not to ask him the
straight question while she had the chance. She had been afraid of
little things--her father's temper, Eros Bela's sneers--when now there
was death and murder to fear.

What had Andor done?

Had he played her false? Played this dirty trick on her out of revenge?
He certainly--now she came to think of it--had avoided meeting her
glance when he went away just now.

Had he played her false?