“I treated it with—­” he said, and, seeing this was something very daring, the other’s attention was caught.

Julia picked up the pieces alone, and carried them out on the tray, and on the tray also she carried a bottle wrapped into a duster.  It was a wide-necked stoppered bottle, two-thirds full of white powder; very much like the one she had brought in, but also very much like the one that stood five from the end on the second shelf of the cupboard.

Soon after that she went up to her room, and took the bottle with her.  Then, when she had set it in a place of safety, and securely locked the door, she broke into a silent laugh of delighted amusement.  She pictured to herself Herr Van de Greutz’s face when, in company with some other chemist, he found the ground rice, while his cook with the “ass-hoofs” carried the explosive to her native land.

“What a thief I should make,” was her own opinion of herself.  “I believe I could do as well as Grimm’s ‘Master Thief,’ who stole the parson and clerk.”  She took up the bottle and shook a little of the contents into her hand; she had not the least idea how it was set off, whether a blow, a fall, or heat would reveal its dangerous characteristics.  For a little she looked at it with curiosity and satisfaction.  But gradually the satisfaction faded; the excitement of the chase was over, and the prize, now it was won, did not seem a great thing.  She set the bottle down rather distastefully, and turned away.

“He could not have got the stuff,” she told herself defiantly—­“he” was Rawson-Clew—­but the next moment, with the justice she dealt herself, she admitted, “Because he would not get it this way; he is not rogue enough; while as for me—­I am a born rogue.”

She pushed open the window and looked out, although it was quite dark, and the air pervaded with a cold, rank smell of wet vegetation.  She was thinking of the other piece of roguery which she had meant to commit, and yet had not.  She had the bulb, in spite of that; it was safe among her clothes—­hers by a free gift, hers absolutely, yet as unable to be sold as the lock of a dead mother’s hair.  The debt of honour could not be paid by that.  From her heart she wished she had not got the daffodil; she put it in the same category with Mr. Gillat’s watch, as one of the things which made her ashamed of herself and of her life, even of this last act, and the very skill that had made it easy.

She took up the bottle again, and for a moment considered whether she should give it back to Herr Van de Greutz—­not personally, that would hardly be safe; but she could post it from England after she left his service.  But she did not do so; Rawson-Clew stood in the way; it was for him she had taken it, and her purpose in him still stood.  He wanted the explosive, it would be to his credit and honour to have it; the government service to which he belonged would think highly of him if he had it—­if he received