the man to whom she had given all
that was best and noblest of her--Hugh! But she could not weep. It
seemed as though, long since, the fountains of her misery were dry. For
a long while she crouched in the window, motionless, and when at last
she raised her head and gazed out down the shimmering vista of the
gorge, it was with a look of new resolution and intelligence. She must
escape. Every iota of cleverness must be given to find a way out of
Schloss Szolnok. What if, in spite of all, the things that Leo Goritz
had confessed were true! She doubted it and yet--if he loved her--! Here
was a woman's revenge, to bait, to charm, to spurn; and then to outwit
him! A test of the sincerity of his professions, and of her own feminine
art--a dangerous game which she had once before thought of playing,
until his cruelty had atrophied all impulse.

But now! If he really cared--her power would grow with the venture, her
own safety the pledge of his purity--a dangerous game, indeed, here
alone upon this crag in the mountains, but if he were sincere, she was
armed with a flaming sword to defend--to destroy! If--? She would not
trust him, but she would fight him with the weapons she had. Her lips
closed in a thin line, and a glint as of polished metal came into her
eyes as the scene in the house of the Beg of Rataj shut out the lovely
landscape before her. To destroy--to fan the spark to flame that she
might extinguish it; to corrode the spirit with the biting acid of
contempt; to envenom the soul--newly born, perhaps--to the sweeter uses
of beneficence, and then escape! If he cared!

And if he did not care--if, as she really believed, he lied to gain an
end....

This was the thought of him that obsessed her. A liar, always. Why not
now? Men of his kind were unusual to women of hers, but even in the
midst of his confession--as near self-abasement as a man of his type
could come, the note of egotism rang clear above the graceful
phrases--too graceful to be anything but manufactured in that clear
inventive brain of his.

She paced the floor, thinking deeply, and at last stopped by the window
and sought again the counsel of the eternal hills. After a while she
turned again into the room and peered into a mirror, seeking in her
face the answer to the riddle. It was pale, resolute, but it was not
ugly.

She planned her campaign with the calm forethought of a general who
picks out his own battlefield, disposing his forces to the best