in the dark. The word 'treaty' I heard for the first time from you. I
didn't know what I was bringing you, except that it was a document of
international importance, and that you'd been helping the British
Foreign Secretary--perhaps Great Britain as a Power--in some ticklish
manoeuvre of high politics. He said that, so far as he was concerned,
you might tell me more if you liked. He left it to you. That was his
message."

"Then I will tell you more!" Maxine exclaimed. "It will be better to do
so. I know that it will make it easier for you to help me. The document
you were bringing me was a treaty--a quite new treaty between Japan,
Russia and France: not a copy, but the original. England had been warned
that there was a secret understanding between the three countries,
unknown to her. There was no time to make a copy. And I stole the real
treaty from Raoul du Laurier, to whom I am engaged--whom I adore, Ivor,
as I didn't know it was in me to adore any man. You know his name,
perhaps--that he's Under Secretary in the Foreign Office, here in Paris.
Oh, I can read in your eyes what you're thinking of me, now. You can't
think worse of me than I think of myself. Yet I did the thing for
Raoul's sake. There's that in my defence--only that."

"I don't understand," I said, trying not to show the horror of Maxine's
treachery to a man who loved and trusted her, which I could not help
feeling.

"How could you?--except that I've betrayed him! But I'll tell you
everything--I'll go back a long way. Then you'll pity me, even if you
scorn me, too. You'll work for me--to save me, and him. For years I've
helped the British Government. Oh, I won't spare myself. I've been a
spy, sometimes against one Power, sometimes against another. When there