ile 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."

I obeyed, beginning at the very beginning and telling her all, except
the part that had to do with Diana Forrest. She had no concern in that.
I told her how I had slept with the green letter-case under my pillow,
and had waked to feel and look for it once or twice an hour. How when
morning came I had been late in getting to the train: how I had
struggled with the two men who tried to keep me out of the reserved
compartment into which they were intruding. How the man who had a right
to it, after wishing to prevent my entering, helped me in the end,
rather than be alone with the pair who had forced themselves upon him.
How he had stumbled almost into my arms in a panic, during the confusion
after the false alarm on the boat's gangway. How he had walked beside me
and seemed on the point of speaking, later, in the Gare du Nord. How I
had avoided and lost sight of him; but how I had many times covertly
touched my pocket to be sure that, through all, the letter-case was
still safe there.

Maxine grew calmer, though not, I think, more hopeful as I talked; and
at last she folded up the diamonds neatly in the red case, which she
gave to me. "Put that into the same pocket," she said, "and then pass
your hand over your coat, as you did often before. Now, does it feel
exactly as if it were the green letter-case with which you started out?"

"Yes, I think it does," I answered, doubtfully. "I'm afraid I shouldn't
know the difference. This _may_ be a little thicker than the other,
but--I can