A pretty state of things that a woman with a position such as she had to keep up should be reduced to six and sevenpence!  Stephen, no doubt, expected her to visit the pawnshop.  It would serve him right if she did so—­and he met her coming out under the three brass balls!  Did she not dress solely and wholly to please him?  Not in the least to please herself!  Personally she had a mind set on higher things, impossible aspirations.  But he liked fine clothes.  And it was her duty to satisfy him.  She strove to satisfy him in all matters.  She lived for him.  She sacrificed herself to him completely.  And what did she get in return?  Nothing!  Nothing!  Nothing!  All men were selfish.  And women were their victims....  Stephen, with his silly bullying rules against credit and so forth....  The worst of men was that they had no sense.

She put a new dose of eau de Cologne on her forehead, and leaned on one elbow.  On the mantelpiece lay the tissue parcel containing the slim silver belt, the price of Li’s death.  She wanted to stick it in the fire.  And only the fact that it would not burn prevented her savagely doing so.  There was something wrong, too, with the occultism.  To receive a paltry sovereign for murdering the greatest statesman of the Eastern hemisphere was simply grotesque.  Moreover, she had most distinctly not wanted to deprive China of a distinguished man.  She had expressly stipulated for an inferior and insignificant mandarin, one that could be spared and that was unknown to Reuter.  She supposed she ought to have looked up China at the Wedgwood Institution and selected a definite mandarin with a definite place of residence.  But could she be expected to go about a murder deliberately like that?

With regard to the gross inadequacy of the fiscal return for her deed, perhaps that was her own fault.  She had not wished for more.  Her brain had been so occupied by the belt that she had wished only for the belt.  But, perhaps, on the other hand, vast wealth was to come.  Perhaps something might occur that very night.  That would be better.  Yet would it be better?  However rich she might become, Stephen would coolly take charge of her riches, and dole them out to her, and make rules for her concerning them.  And besides, Charlie would suspect her guilt.  Charlie understood her, and perused her thoughts far better than Stephen did.  She would never be able to conceal the truth from Charlie.  The conversation, the death of Li within two hours, and then a sudden fortune accruing to her—­Charlie would inevitably put two and two together and divine her shameful secret.

The outlook was thoroughly black anyway.

She then fell asleep.

When she awoke, some considerable time afterwards, Stephen was calling to her.  It was his voice, indeed, that had aroused her.  The room was dark.

‘I say, Vera,’ he demanded, in a low, slightly inimical tone, ’have you taken a sovereign out of the empty drawer in your toilet-table?’