erated. "So I'll take the key, by your leave."

He turned to the door of the inner room and pushed it open, just as he
had done awhile ago, and now--as then--he cast a rapid glance round the
room.

Klara, through half-closed lids, watched his every movement.

"Why!" he exclaimed, turning back to her, and with a look of
well-feigned surprise, "the key is not in its place."

"I know it isn't," she retorted curtly.

"Then where is it?"

"I have put it away."

"When? It was hanging on its usual nail when I first came here this
afternoon. I remember the door being open, and my glancing into the room
casually. I am sure it was there then."

"It may have been: but I put it away after that."

"Why should you have done that?"

"I don't know, and, anyhow, it's no business of yours, is it?"

"Give me that back-door key, Klara," insisted the young man, in a tone
of savage command.

"No!" she replied, slowly and decisively.

There was silence in the little, low raftered room after that, a silence
only broken by the buzzing of flies against the white globe of the lamp,
and by the snores of the sleepers who sprawled across the tables.

Leopold Hirsch had drawn in his breath with a low, hissing sound; his
face, by the yellow light of the lamp, looked ghastly in colour, and his
hands were twitching convulsively as the trembling fingers clenched and
opened with a monotonous, jerky movement of attempted self-control.

Klara had not failed to notice these symptoms of an agony of mind which
the young man was so vainly trying to hide from her. For the moment she
almost felt sorry for him--sorry and slightly remorseful.

After all, Leo's frame of mind, the agony which he endured, came from
the strength of his love for her. Neither Eros Bela, nor the young
Count, nor the many admirers who had hung round her in the past until
such time as their fancy found more permanent anchorage elsewhere, would
have suffered tortures of soul and of heart because she had indulged in
a mild flirtation with a rival. Eros Bela would have stormed and cursed,
the young Count would have laid his riding-whip across the shoulders of
his successful rival and there would have been an end of the matter.
Leopold Hirsch would go down to hell and endure the torments of the
damned, then return to heaven at a smile from her, and go back to hell
again and glory in his misery.

But just now she was frightened of him; he looked almost like a living
corpse;