IN vain I tortured my wits; here and there a word was comprehensible. I made out the number 5 and fairly ground my teeth. Here was the key to the secret; here was my chart, and I could not decipher it. I folded up the paper with great care, ripped open a seam of my mattress, and folded the mystery in. By night I would keep it there; by day I would carry it about on my body. Somehow, I would think out a way to decipher it; I would go to New York and interview a priest of the Greek Church. If necessary I would bribe him to secrecy... my brain was full of plans, more or less foolish and impossible. At any rate, I reasoned that the Red-haired Woman, not finding any paper in the bookcase, would do one of two things—either she would suspect a previous theft and disposal of the treasure and give up her perilous mission, or she would suspect me whom she had found once at night before the book-shelves. In this case I was, of course, both in greater danger, and, also, providentially protected. At least, she would not kill me till she had got that paper out of my possession. My problem was, first, to find the meaning of my valuable chart, then to put it in her way, and, while she endeavored to get a translation—I could not believe her to possess a knowledge of ecclesiastical Russian—it was my part to rifle the hoard and to set the police on her track. When I had the meaning of the paper, I would send word to the police at Pine Cone. Till then, I would play the game alone. So did my vanity and wounded feelings lead me on, and so very nearly to my own destruction.

After I had finished sewing up my mattress-seam, I put out my light and went to stand near my window. Unconsciously affected by my fears, I kept close to the long, dark curtain, and stood still, looking down at the silvered garden paths, the green-gray lines of the box, the towering, fountain-like masses of the trees, waving their spray of shadow tracery across the turf. I stood there a long time brooding over my plans—it must have been an hour—before I saw a figure come out into the garden. It was Paul Dabney. He was walking quietly to and fro, smoking and whistling softly. I could hear the gravel crunch beneath his feet.

All at once he stopped short and threw up his head as though at a signal. He tossed away his cigarette. He stared at the arbor, the one where poor Mary used to watch her little charge at play, and then, as though he were drawn against his will, he went slowly towards it, hesitated, bent his head a little, and stepped in. I heard the low murmur of his voice. I thought that Mrs. Brane was in the arbor, and my heart grew sick with jealousy. I was about to drag myself away from the window when another figure came out of the arbor and stood for an instant in the bright moonlight looking straight up to my window. I grew cold. I stood there holding my breath. I heard a little, low, musical, wicked laugh. The creature—my own cloak drooping from her shoulders—turned and went back into the shelter of the vine. My God! What was she about to do to Paul, the blind fool to sit there with that horrible thing and to fancy that he sat with me? Having failed in her attempt to drown him, she was now beguiling him out of the house for a few hours, in order to give one of her accomplices a chance to search the bookcase. I had no scruples about playing eavesdropper. I took off my shoes and hurried noiselessly down the stairs. I stole to a shuttered window in the dining-room, and, inch by inch, with infinite caution, I raised the sash. I was so near to the arbor that a hand stretched out at the full length of its arm could touch the honeysuckle vines. I stood there and strained my ears.

The woman was speaking so low that it was but a gentle thread of voice. It was extraordinarily young and sweet, the tone—sweeter than my voice, though astonishingly like it.

“Why did I save you, Paul Dabney?” she was murmuring, “can't you guess? Now, can't you guess?”

There came the sound of a soft, long-drawn, dreadful kiss. I burned with shame from head to foot.

“You devil—you she-devil!” said Paul Dabney in low, hot speech; “you can kiss!”

I could bear no more. She must be in his arms. What was the reason for this deviltry, this profanation of my innocence and youth, this desecration of my name? I hated and loathed Paul Dabney for his hot voice, for his kiss. He thought that he held me there in his arms, that he insulted me, tamely submissive, with his words, “You devil, you she-devil...” I fled to my room. I threw myself upon my bed. I sobbed and raved in a crazed, smothered fashion to my pillow. I struck the bed with my hands. I do not know how long that dreadful meeting lasted; I realized, with entire disregard, that while it lasted Sara was searching the bookcase. To this day I can think of it only with a sickness of loathing. Once I fancied that I heard Paul Dabney's step under my window. But I hid my head, covered my ears. I lay in a still fever of rage and horror all that night. The insult—so strange and unimaginable a one—to my own unhappy love was more than I could bear. I wanted to kill, and kill, and kill these two, and, last, myself.