private bit of a spree,
before I had to be officially on the _Spree_."

He chuckled at the futile pun.

"You saw Anne Pendennis at Ostend. Are you certain it was she?" I
demanded.

"Of course I am. She looked awfully fetching, and gave me one of her
most gracious bows--"

"You didn't speak to her?" I pursued, throwing away the cigarette I had
been smoking. My teeth had met in the end of it as I listened to this
news.

My ingenuous companion seemed embarrassed by the question.

"Well, no; though I'd have liked to. But--fact is, I--well, of course, I
wasn't alone, don't you know; and though she was a jolly little
girl--she--I couldn't very well have introduced her to Miss Pendennis.
Anyhow, I shouldn't have had the cheek to speak to her; she was with an
awfully swagger set. Count Loris Solovieff was one of 'em. He's really
the Grand Duke Loris, you know, though he prefers to go about incog.
more often than not. He was talking to Miss Pendennis. Here's the
office. I won't come in. Perhaps I'll turn up and see you off to-night.
If I don't, good-bye and good luck; and thanks awfully for the lunch."

I was thankful to be rid of him. I dare not question him further. I
could not trust myself to do so; for his words had summoned that black
horde of doubts to the attack once more, and this time they would not
be vanquished.

Small wonder that I had not found Anne Pendennis at Berlin! What was she
doing at Ostend, in company with "a swagger set" that included a Russian
Grand Duke? I had heard many rumors concerning this Loris, whom I had
never seen; rumors that were the reverse of discreditable to him. He was
said to be different from most of his illustrious kinsfolk, inasmuch
that he was an enthusiastic disciple of Tolstoy, and had been dismissed
from the Court in disgrace, on account of his avowed sympathy with the
revolutionists.

But what connection could he have with Anne Pendennis?

And she,--she! Were there any limits to her deceit, her dissimulation?
She was a traitress certainly; perhaps a murderess.

And yet I loved her, even now. I think even more bitter than my
disillusion was the conviction that I must still love her, though I had
lost her--forever!

CHAPTER XI

"LA MORT OU LA VIE!"

I took a cab from the newspaper office to Von Eckhardt's address,--a
flat in the west end.

I found him, as Medhurst had reported, considerably agitated. He is a
good-hearted chap, and a brilliant writer, thou