sake of England. Ivor! Think again. Do you want me to go mad?"

"I will think," I said, trying to speak reassuringly. "Give me a
moment--a quiet moment--"

"A quiet moment," she repeated, bitterly, "when for me each second is an
hour! It's late, and this is the night of my new play. Soon, I must be
at the theatre, for the make-up and dressing of this part for the first
act are a heavy business. I don't want all Paris to know that Maxine de
Renzie has been ruined by her enemies. Let us keep the secret while we
can, for others' sakes, and so gain time for our own, if all is not
lost--if you believe still that there's any hope. Oh, save me,
Ivor--somehow. My whole life is in this."

"Let your understudy take your part to-night, while we think, and work,"
I suggested. "You cannot go to the theatre in this state."

"For an actress there's no such word as 'cannot,'" she said bitterly. "I
could play a part to the finish, and crawl off the stage to die the next
instant; yet no one would have guessed that I was dying. I have no
understudy. What use to have one? What audience would stop in the
theatre after an announcement that their Maxine's understudy would take
her place? Every man and woman would walk out and get his money back.
No; for the sake of the man I love better than my life, or twenty
lives--the man I've either saved or ruined--I'll play tonight, if I go
mad or kill myself to-morrow. Don't 'think quietly,' Ivor. Think out
aloud, and let me follow the workings of your mind. We may help each
other, so. Let us go over together everything that happened to you from
the minute you took the letter-case from the Foreign Secretary up to the
minute I came into this room."