ll not believe in me! He will not be convinced!"

I felt myself in a very difficult position. Either this woman was
thoroughly repentant, and sincerely anxious to make some genuine
communication to me, or else she was an actress whose powers might
have excited envy in the Bernhardt herself.

I concluded that I could lose nothing by encouraging her to speak.

"You must pardon me if I seem distrustful," I said with a wholly
sympathetic expression. "I have my principles, and cannot depart from
them. But I have every wish to convince you of my personal
friendship."

She interrupted me with a terrible glance.

"Personal friendship! Monsieur, do you know what I have come here to
tell you?"

And rising wildly to her feet, she spread out her hands in a gesture
of utter despair:

"They have ordered me to take your life!"

I am not a man who is easily surprised.

The adventures I have passed through, some of them far more
extraordinary than anything I have recorded in my public revelations,
have accustomed me to meet almost any situation with diplomatic
presence of mind.

But on this occasion I am obliged to admit that I was fairly taken
aback.

As the lovely but dangerous woman whom I had cause to regard as the
most formidable instrument in the hands of the conspirators, avowed
to my face that she had been charged with the mission to assassinate
me, I sprang from my chair and confronted her.

She stood, swaying slightly, as though the intensity of her emotion
was about to overpower her.

"Do you mean what you say? Do you know what you have said?" I
demanded.

The Princess Y---- made no answer, but she lifted her violet eyes to
mine, and I saw the big tears welling up and beginning to overflow.

I was dismayed. My strength of mind seemed to desert me. I have
looked on without a tear when men have fallen dead at my feet, but I
have never been able to remain calm before a woman in tears.

"Madame! Princess!" I was on the point of addressing her by a yet
more familiar name. "At least, sit down and recover yourself."

Like one dazed, I led her to a chair. Like one dazed, she sank into
it in obedience to my authoritative pressure.

"Come," I said in a tone which I strove to render at once firm and
soothing, "it is clear that we must understand each other. You have
come here to tell me this, I suppose?"

"At the risk of my life," she breathed. "What must you think of me!"

I recalled the fate of poor Menken,