Part 21 (1/2)

”Mr. Sterling!--Monsieur V----?” she cried in an agitated voice that seemed ready to break down into a sob. ”Can you forgive me for intruding on you? I dare not speak to you freely in my own house. I am beset by spies.”

”Sit down, Princess,” I said soothingly, as I rolled forward a comfortable chair. ”Of course I am both charmed and flattered by your visit, whatever be its cause.”

With feminine intuition she marked the reserve in my response to her appeal.

”Ah! You distrust me, and you are quite right!” she exclaimed, casting herself into the chair.

She fixed her luminous eyes on me in a deep look, half-imploring, half-reproachful.

”It is true, then, what they have been telling me? You were the man, dressed as an inspector of the Third Section who traveled on the train with me? And you saw the death”--her words were interrupted by a shudder--”of that unhappy man?”

It was not very easy to preserve my composure in the face of her emotion. Nevertheless, at the risk of appearing callous, I replied:

”I cannot pretend to understand your question. However, even if I did it would make no difference.

”Since you know my name is A. V----, you must know also that I never allow myself to talk about my work.”

The Princess winced under these cold words almost as though she had been physically rebuffed. She clasped her delicately-gloved hands together, and murmured as though to herself:

”He will 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 friends.h.i.+p.”

She interrupted me with a terrible glance.

”Personal friends.h.i.+p! 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sa.s.sinate 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.”