“Well,” I said slowly, “I think it’s time that you left me now.”

“That’s your answer?  You can’t mean it.”

“I do mean it, just as much as I meant to refuse you the three other times that you did me the same honour.  You asked me to hear what you had to say to-night, and I have heard it; so there’s no reason why I shouldn’t press the electric bell for my chauffeur to stop, and—­”

“Do you know that you’re pronouncing du Laurier’s doom, to say nothing of your own?”

“No.  I don’t know it.”

“Then I haven’t made myself clear enough.”

“That’s true.  You haven’t made yourself clear enough.”

“In what detail have I failed?  Because—­“.

“In the detail of the document.  I’ve told you I know nothing about it.  You’ve told me you know everything.  Yet—­”

“So I do.”

“Prove that by saying what it is—­to satisfy my curiosity.”

“I’ve explained why I can’t do that—­here.”

“Then why should you stay here longer, since that is the point, to my mind.  You understood before you came into my carriage that I had no intention of letting you go all the way home with me.”

Count Godensky suddenly laughed.  And the laugh frightened me—­frightened me horribly, just as I had begun to have confidence in myself, and feel that I had got the best of the game.

CHAPTER XI

MAXINE OPENS THE GATE FOR A MAN

“You are afraid that du Laurier may find out,” he said.  “But he knows already.”

“Knows what?”

“That I expected to have the privilege of going to your house with you.”

All that I had gained seemed worthless.  Those quiet, sneering words of his almost crushed me.  On the load I had struggled to bear without falling they laid one feather too much.

My voice broke.  “You—­devil!” I cried at him.  “You dared to tell Raoul that?”

Opposite, on her narrow little seat, Marianne stirred uneasily.  Till now our tones had been quiet, and she could not understand one word we said.  She is the soul of discretion and a triumph of good training in her walk of life; but she loves me more than she loves any other creature on earth, and now she could see and hear that the man had driven me to the brink of hysterics.  She would have liked to tear his face with her nails, or choke him, I think.  If I had given her the word, I believe she would have tried with all her strength—­which is not small—­and a very good will, to kill him.  I was dimly conscious of what her restlessness meant, and vaguely comforted too, by the thought of her supreme loyalty.  But I forgot Marianne when Godensky answered my question.

“Yes, I told him.  It was the truth.  And I’ve always understood that you made a great point of never doing anything which you considered in the least risque.  So why should I suppose you would rather du Laurier didn’t know?  You might already have mentioned it to him.”