ivering now and then of her eyelids. She had indeed the
appearance of a woman who had suffered.

The car rushed on into the darkness. Behind them lay that restless
phantasmagoria of lights streaming to the sky. In front, blank space.
Peter, through half-closed eyes, watched the woman by his side. From the
moment of her entrance into his library, he had summed her up in his
mind with a single word. She was, beyond a doubt, an adventuress. No
woman could have proposed the things which she had proposed who was not
of that ilk. Yet for that reason it behoved them to have a care in their
dealings with her. At her instigation they had set out upon this
adventure, which might well turn out according to any fashion that she
chose. Yet without Bernadine what could she do? She was not the woman to
carry on the work which he had left behind for the love of him. Her
words had been frank, her action shameful, but natural. Bernadine was
dead, and she had realised quickly enough the best market for his
secrets. In a few days' time his friends would have come and she would
have received nothing. He told himself that he was foolish to doubt her.
There was not a flaw in the sequence of events, no possible reason for
the suspicions which yet lingered at the back of his brain. Intrigue, it
was certain, was to her as the breath of her body. He was perfectly
willing to believe that the death of Bernadine would have affected her
little more than the sweeping aside of a fly. His very common sense bade
him accept her story.

By degrees he became drowsy. Suddenly he was startled into a very
wideawake state. Through half-closed eyes he had seen Sogrange draw a
sheet of paper from his pocket, a gold pencil from his chain, and
commence to write. In the middle of a sentence his eyes were abruptly
lifted. He was looking at the Baroness. Peter, too, turned his head; he
also looked at the Baroness. Without a doubt she had been watching both
of them. Sogrange's pencil continued its task, only he traced no more
characters. Instead, he seemed to be sketching a face, which presently
he tore carefully up into small pieces and destroyed. He did not even
glance towards Peter, but Peter understood very well what had happened.
He had been about to send him a message, but had found the Baroness
watching. Peter was fully awake now. His faint sense of suspicion had
deepened into a positive foreboding. He had a reckless desire to stop
the car, to descend upon the