It chanced that the box was empty when Maggie, with flying footsteps, hastened down the corridor and pushed open the door.  She sank into a chair, her knees trembling, her senses still dazed.  Deliberately, although with hot and trembling fingers, she folded over and tore into small pieces a programme of the dances, which she had picked up from an adjoining chair.  The action, insignificant though it was, seemed to bring her back into touch with the real and actual world, the world of music and wild gayety, of swiftly moving feet, of laughter and languorous voices.  For a brief space of time she had escaped, she had wandered a little way into an unknown country, a country from whose thrilling dangers she had emerged with a curious feeling that life would never be altogether the same again.  She glanced at the clock at the back of the box.  She had been absent from the Hall altogether only about an hour and twenty minutes.  There was still at least an hour before it would be possible for her to plead weariness and escape.  And opposite, in the shadows of the distant box, the mock Prince Shan seemed always to be gazing at her with that cryptic smile upon his lips.

Presently the door was stealthily opened.  A face as pale as death, with black eyes like pieces of coal, was framed for a moment in the shadowed slit.  A little waft of familiar perfume stole in.  La Belle Nita, her flaming lips widely parted, as soon as she recognised the sole occupant of the box, crept through the opening and closed the door again.

“You are here?” she exclaimed incredulously.  “Your courage failed you?  You did not go?”

“I have been and returned,” Maggie answered.  “Now tell me what I have done that you should have plotted this thing against me?”

The girl sat on the edge of a chair and for a moment hummed the refrain of a sad chant, as she rocked slowly backwards and forwards.

“‘What have you done?’ the rose asked the butterfly.  ’What have you done?’ the mimosa blossom asked the little blue bird, whose wings fluttered amongst her leaves.  ’You have taken love from me, love which is the blossom of life.’”

“It sounds very picturesque,” Maggie said coldly, “but I do not follow your allegory.  What I want to know is why you lied to me, why you sent me to that house to meet Prince Shan?”

“How did I lie to you?” Nita demanded.  “The papers you sought were there.  Were they not yours for the asking, or was the price too great?”

“The papers were there, certainly,” Maggie acquiesced, “but you knew very well—­”

She stopped short.  Slowly the Oriental idea of it all was beginning to frame itself in her mind.  She dimly understood the bewilderment in the other’s face.

“The papers were there, and he, the most wonderful of all men, was there,” Nita murmured, “yet you leave him while the night is yet young, you return here without them!”

Maggie rose from her chair, moved to the side table and poured herself out a glass of wine, which she drank hastily.  Anything to escape from the scornful wonder of those questioning eyes!