If I showed him the diamonds now, he would want to stop and talk.  He would ask me questions which I would rather not answer until I’d seen Ivor Dundas again, and knew better what to say—­whether truth or fiction.  Still, I wished Raoul to have the necklace to-night, because it would mean all the difference to him between constant, gnawing anxiety, and the joy of deliverance.  Let him have a happy night, even though I was sending him away, even though I did not know what to-morrow might bring, either for him or for me.

I tied the gold cords of the bag in two hard knots, and went out with it to Raoul in the next room.

“This holds something precious,” I said, smiling at him, and making a mystery.  “You’ll value the something, I know—­partly for itself, partly because I—­because I’ve been at a lot of trouble to get it for you.  When you see it, you’ll be more resigned not to see me—­just for tonight.  But you’re to write me a letter, please, and describe accurately every one of your sensations on opening the bag.  Also, you may say in your letter a few kind things about me, if you like.  And I want it to come to me when I first wake up to-morrow morning.  So go now, dearest, and have the sensations, and write about them.  I shall be thinking of you every minute, asleep or awake.”

“Why mayn’t I look now?” asked Raoul, taking the soft mass of pink and silver from me, in the nice, clumsy way a big man has of handling a woman’s things.

“Because—­just because.  But perhaps you’ll guess why, by and by,” I said.  Then I held up my face to be kissed, and he bundled the small bag away in an inside pocket of his coat, as carelessly as if it held nothing but a handkerchief and a pair of gloves.

“Be careful!” I couldn’t help exclaiming.  But I don’t think he heard, for he had me in his arms and was kissing me as if he knew the fear in my heart—­the fear that it might be for the last time.

CHAPTER X

MAXINE DRIVES WITH THE ENEMY

When Raoul was gone I made Marianne hurry me out of the cloth-of-gold and filmy tissue in which the unfortunate Princess Helene had died, and into the black gown in which the almost equally unfortunate Maxine had come to the theatre.  I did not even stop to take off my make-up, for though the play was an unusually short one, and all the actors and actresses had followed my example of prompt readiness for all four acts, it lacked twenty minutes of twelve when I was dressed.  I had to see Count Godensky, get rid of him somehow, and still be in time to keep my appointment with Ivor Dundas, for which I knew he would strain every nerve not to be late.

My electric carriage would be at the stage door, and my plan was to speak to Godensky, if he were waiting, if possible learn in a moment or two whether he had really found out the truth, and then act accordingly.  But if I could avoid it, I meant, in any case, to put off a long conversation until later.