But Griggs knew that none of these troubles afflicted Lady Maud, and when he spoke to her now and then, between the acts, she felt his sympathy for her in every word and inflection.

She was glad when the evening was over and she was at home in her dressing-room, and there was no more effort to be made till the next day.  But even alone, she did not behave or look very differently; she twisted up her thick brown hair herself, as methodically as ever, and laid out the black velvet gown on the lounge after shaking it out, so that it should be creased as little as possible; but when she was ready to go to bed she put on a dressing-gown and sat down at her table to write to Rufus Van Torp.

The letter was begun and she had written half a dozen lines when she laid down the pen, to unlock a small drawer from which she took an old blue envelope that had never been sealed, though it was a good deal the worse for wear.  There was a photograph in it, which she laid before her on the letter; and she looked down at it steadily, resting her elbows on the table and her forehead and temples in her hands.

It was a snapshot photograph of a young officer in khaki and puttees, not very well taken, and badly mounted on a bit of white pasteboard that might have been cut from a bandbox with a penknife; but it was all she had, and there could never be another.

She looked at it a long time.

‘You understand, dear,’ she said at last, very low; ‘you understand.’

She put it away again and locked the drawer before she went on with her letter to Van Torp.  It was easy enough to tell him what she had learned about Feist from Logotheti; it was even possible that he had found it out for himself, and had not taken the trouble to inform her of the fact.  Apart from the approval that friendship inspires, she had always admired the cool discernment of events which he showed when great things were at stake.  But it was one thing, she now told him, to be indifferent to the stupid attacks of the press, it would be quite another to allow himself to be accused of murder; the time had come when he must act, and without delay; there was a limit beyond which indifference became culpable apathy; it was clear enough now, she said, that all these attacks on him had been made to ruin him in the estimation of the public on both sides of the Atlantic before striking the first blow, as he himself had guessed; Griggs was surely not an alarmist, and Griggs said confidently that Van Torp’s enemies meant business; without doubt, a mass of evidence had been carefully got together during the past three months, and it was pretty sure that an attempt would be made before long to arrest him; would he do nothing to make such an outrage impossible?  She had not forgotten, she could never forget, what she owed him, but on his side he owed something to her, and to the great friendship that bound them to each other.  Who was this man Feist, and who was behind him?  She did not know why she was so sure that he knew the truth, supposing that there had really been a murder, but her instinct told her so.