“Then what had?” she asked.  “What has gone wrong, Max?  You look fagged out.”

“Baroni has been round to see me—­to ask me to break off my engagement.”  He laughed shortly.

“He doesn’t approve, I suppose?”

“That’s a mild way of expressing his attitude.”

Adrienne was silent a moment.  Then she spoke, slowly, consideringly.

“I don’t—­approve—­either.  It isn’t right, Max.”

He bit his lip.

“So you—­you, too, are against me?”

She stretched out her hand impulsively.

“Not against you, Max!  Never that!  How could I be? . . .  But I don’t think you’re being quite fair to Diana.  You ought to tell her the truth.”

He wheeled round.

“No one knows better than you how impossible that is.”

“Don’t you trust her then—­the woman you’re asking to be your wife?”

The tinge of irony in her voice brought a sudden light of anger to his eyes.

“That’s not very just of you, Adrienne,” he said coldly. “I would trust her with my life.  But I have no right to pledge the trust of others—­and that’s what I should be doing if I told her.  We have our duty—­you and I—­and all this . . . is part of it.”

Adrienne hesitated.

“Couldn’t you—­ask the others to release you?”

He shook his head.

“What right have I to ask them to trust an Englishwoman with their secret—­just for my pleasure?”

“For your happiness,” corrected Adrienne softly.

“Or for my happiness?  My happiness doesn’t count with them one straw.”

“It does with me.  I don’t see why she shouldn’t be told.  Baroni knows, and Olga—­you have to trust them.”

“Baroni will be silent for the sake of the dead, and Olga out of her love—­or fear”—­with a bitter smile—­“of me.”

“And wouldn’t Diana, too, be silent for your sake?”

“My dear Adrienne”—­a little irritably—­“Englishwomen are so frank—­so indiscreetly trusting.  That’s where the difficulty lies, and I dare not risk it.  There’s too much at stake.  But can you imagine any agent they may have put upon our track surprising her knowledge out of Olga?” He laughed contemptuously.  “I fancy not!  If Olga hadn’t been a woman she’d have made her mark in the Diplomatic Service.”

“Yet what is there to make her keep faith with us?” said Adrienne doubtfully.  “She is poor—­”

“Her own doing, that!”

“True, but the fact remains.  And those others would pay a fortune for the information she could give.  Besides, I believe she frankly hates me.”

“Possibly.  But she would never, I think, allow her personal feelings to override everything else.  After all, she was one of us—­is still, really, though she would gladly disown the connection.”

“Well, when you’ve looked at every side of the matter, we only come back to the same point.  I think you’re acting wrongly.  You’re letting Diana pledge herself blindly, when you’re not free to give her the confidence a man should give his wife—­when you don’t even know—­yet—­how it may all end.”