But she went on speaking, resolutely, as though to purge her soul, for all time, of explanation and excuse.
"That next-of-kin agency was a dingy little office up two dingy stairs in Chancery Lane. For a few days their work seemed bearable enough, though it hurt me to see that all their income was being squeezed out of miserably poor people—always the miserably poor, the submerged souls with romantic dreams of impending good fortune, which, of course, always just escaped them. That, I could endure. But when I found that the agency was branching out, and was actually trying to present me for inspection as a titled heiress, in sore need of a secret and immediate marriage, I revolted, at once. Then they calmly proposed that I embark for America, as some sort of bogus countess—and while they were still talking and debating over what mild and strictly limited extravagances they would stand for, and just what expenses they would allow, I bolted! But their scheming and plotting had given me the hint, for I knew, if the worst came to the worst, I would not be altogether under the thumb of Lord Boxspur. So when I came South from Paris I simply assumed the title—it simplified so many things. It both gave me opportunities and protected me. If, to gain my ends and to reconnoitre my territory, I became the occasional guest—remember, Jim, the most discreet and guarded guest!—of Count Anton Szapary—who carried a hundred thousand crowns away from the Vienna Jockey Club a month or two ago—you must simply try to make the end justify the means. I was still trying to get in touch with you. One of his automobiles was always politely placed at my disposal. It was a chance, well, scarcely to be missed. For, you see, it was my intention to meet His Highness, the Prince Ignace Slevenski Pobloff, under slightly different circumstances than would prevail if he and his valet should quietly step through that door at the present moment!"
She laughed, a little bitterly, with a reckless shrug of the shoulders. Durkin, nettled by the sound of tragedy in her voice, did not like the sound of that laugh. Then, as he looked at her more critically, he saw that she was white and worn and tired. But it was the words over which she had laughed which sent him abruptly hurrying into the next room with a lighted match, to read the hour from the little Swiss clock above the cabinet.
"If we're after anything here we've got to get it!" he said, with conscious roughness. "It's later than I thought."
"Very well," she answered, quietly enough.
Then she turned to him, as he waited with his hand on the bedroom light-button, before switching it off.
"You need never be afraid that I will bother you with any more of my hesitations, and scruples, and half-timid qualms, as I once did. All that is over and done with. I feel, now, that we're both in this sort of work from necessity, and not by accident. It has gripped and engulfed us, now, for good."
He raised a hand to stop her, stung to the quick by the misery and bitterness of her voice, still asking himself if it was not only the bitter cry of love for some neglectful love's reply. But she swept on, abandonedly.
"There's no use quibbling and fighting against it. We've got to keep at it, and wring out of it what we can, and always go back to it, and bend to it, and still keep at it, to the bitter end!"
"Frank, you mustn't say this!" he cried.