I told myself that I must do my best to wash away these tell-tale stains before leaving the room; but first I would look for the treaty.

I began my search by stirring up the mass of scattered papers on the floor, and in spite of the horror which gripped me by the throat, I cried “hurrah!” when, half hidden by the twisted rug, I saw the missing letter-case.  It was lying spread open, back uppermost, and there came an instant of despair when I pounced on it only to find it empty.  But there was the treaty on the floor underneath; and lucky it was that the searchers had thrown it out, for there were gouts of blood on the letter-case, while the treaty was clean and unspotted.

With a sense of unutterable relief which almost made up for everything endured and still to be endured, I slipped the document back into the pocket from which it had been stolen.

At that moment a board creaked in the corridor, and then came a step outside the door.

My blood rushed up to my head.  But it was not of myself I thought; it was of the treaty.  If I were to be caught here, alone with the dead man, my hands and clothing stained with his blood, I should be arrested.  The treaty must not be found on me.  Yet I must hide it, save it.  I made a dash for the window, and once outside, standing on the narrow balcony, I threw the candle-end into the room, aiming for the fire-place.  Faint starlight, sifting through heavy clouds, showed me a row of small flower-pots standing in a wooden box.  Hastily I wrapped the treaty in a towel which hung over the iron railing, lifted out two of the flower-pots (in which the plants were dead and dry), laid the flat parcel I had made in the bottom of the box, and replaced the pots to cover and conceal it.  Then I walked back into the room again.  A hand, fumbling at the handle of the door, pushed it open with a faint creaking of the hinges.  Then the light of a dark lantern flashed.

DIANA FORREST’S PART

CHAPTER XIV

DIANA TAKES A MIDNIGHT DRIVE

Some people apparently understand how to be unhappy gracefully, as if it were a kind of fine art.  I don’t.  It seems too bad to be true that I should be unhappy, and as if I must wake up to find that it was only a bad dream.

I suppose I’ve been spoiled a good deal all my life.  Everybody has been kind to me, and tried to do things for my pleasure, just as I have for them; and I have taken things for granted—­except, of course, with Lisa.  But Lisa is different—­different from everyone else in the world.  I have never expected anything from her, as I have from others.  All I’ve wanted was to make her as happy as such a poor, little, piteous creature could be, and to teach myself never to mind anything that she might say or do.