“Oh, I wouldn’t trust my treasure to the post office, not even if it were insured.  Open that wonderful safe you gave me a peep into the other day, and I’ll put this valuable document in among the others, not more valuable to the country than this ought to be to you.  I’ll hide it there, and you must shut up the safe without looking for it, till I’ve gone.  Then, you must count ten, and after that—­you may search.  Remember, you said you’d submit to any penalty, so no excuses, no complaints.”

Raoul laughed.  “You shall have your way, fantastic though it be, for you are a sorceress, and have bewitched me.”

He unlocked the door of the safe and stood waiting for me to gratify my whim.  But I gaily motioned him behind me.  “If you stand there you can see where I put it, and that won’t! be fair play.  Turn your back.”

He obeyed.  “You see how I trust you!” he said.  “There lie my country’s secrets.”

“They’re safe from me,” I said pertly. (And so indeed they were—­now.) “They’re too uninteresting to amuse me in the least.”

As I spoke I found and abstracted the dummy treaty and slipped the real one into its place.  Then I laid the envelope with the note I had written where he could not help finding it at first or second glance.

“Now you can close the safe,” I said.

He shut the door, and I almost breathed aloud the words that burst from my heart, “Thank Heaven!”

“I must leave you,” I told him.  And I was kind for a moment, capricious no longer, because, though the treaty had been restored, I was going to open the cage of Godensky’s vengeance, and—­I was afraid of him.

“I may come to you as soon as I’m free?” Raoul asked.

“Yes.  Come and tell me what you think of the news, and—­what you think of me,” I said.  And while I spoke, smiling, I prayed within that he might continue to think of me all things good—­far better than I deserved, yet not better than I would try to deserve in the future, if I were permitted to spend that future with him.

The next thing I did was to send my letter to Count Godensky.  This was a flinging down of the glove, and I knew it well.  But I was ready to fight now.

Then, I had to keep my promise to Miss Forrest.  But I had thought of a way in which, I hoped, that promise—­fulfilled as I meant to fulfil it—­might help rather than injure me.  I had not lain awake all night for nothing.

I went to the office of the Chief of Police, who is a gentleman and a patron of the theatre—­when he can spare time from his work.  I had met him, and had reason to know that he admired my acting.

His first words were of congratulation upon my success in the new play; and he was as cordial, as complimentary, as if he had never heard of that scene at the Elysee Palace Hotel, about which of course he knew everything—­so far as his subordinate could report.

“Are you surprised to see me, Monsieur?” I asked.