“ALEXIS.”

If anything could have given me pleasure at that moment, it would have been to tear the letter in little pieces, with the writer looking on.  Then to throw those pieces in his hateful face, and say, “That’s your answer.”

But he was not looking on, and even if he had been I could not have done what I wished.  He knew that I would have to consent to see him, that he need have no fear I would profit by my knowledge of his intentions, to order him sent away from the stage door.  I would have to see him.  But how could I manage it after refusing—­as I must refuse—­to let Raoul go home with me?  Raoul was coming to me after my death scene on the stage.  At the very least, he would expect to put me into my carriage when I left the theatre, even if he went no further.  Yet there would be Godensky, waiting, and Raoul would see him.  What could I do to escape from such an impasse?

CHAPTER IX

MAXINE GIVES BACK THE DIAMONDS

I tried to answer the question, to decide something; but my brain felt dead.  “I can’t think now.  I must trust to luck—­trust to luck,” I said to myself, desperately, as Marianne dressed me.  “By and by I’ll think it all out.”

But after that my part gave me no more time to think.  I was not Maxine de Renzie, but Princess Helene of Hungaria, whose tragic fate was even more sure and swift than miserable Maxine’s.  When Princess Helene had died in her lover’s arms, however (died as Maxine had not deserved to die), and I was able to pick up the tangled threads of my own life, where I’d laid them down, the questions were still crying out for answer, and must somehow be decided at once.

First, there was Raoul to be put off and got out of the way—­Raoul, my best beloved, whose help and protection I needed so much, yet must forego, and hurt him instead.

The stage-door keeper had orders to let him “come behind,” and so he was already waiting at the door of my little boudoir by the time Helene had died, the curtain had gone down, and Maxine de Renzie had been able to leave the stage.

As we went together into the room, he caught both my hands, crushing them tightly in his, and kissing them over and over again.  But his face was pale and sad, and a new fear sprang up in my heart, like a sudden live flame among red ashes.

“What is it, Raoul?—­why do you look like that?” I asked; while inside my head another question sounded like a shriek.  “What if some word had come to him in the theatre—­about the treaty?”

Then I could have cried as a child cries, with the snapping of the tension, when he answered:  “It was only that terrible last scene, darling.  I’ve seen you die in other parts.  But it never affected me like this.  Perhaps it’s because you didn’t belong to me in those days.  Or is it that you were more realistic in your acting to-night than ever before?  Anyway, it was awful—­so horribly real.  It was all I could do to sit still and not jump out of the box to save you.  Prince Cyril was a poor chap not to thwart the villain.  I should have killed him in the third act, and then Helene might have been happily married, instead of dying.”