"Not to a soul."
"I do not understand it. I do not understand it," he repeated. "Questions were even put to me about myself--to me, who have given so much to the cause and done so much, too. But if any questions are put to you to-day, you will understand the reason. Will you come here this afternoon?"
After some further conversation I agreed to return in the afternoon and left him. I attached little or no importance to his statements at the time, but they had a more than sinister look when I came to recall them in the light of after events.
I knew I was playing with double-edged tools in the affair. Suspicion of my good faith would bring on me the anger of men to whom treachery was the one unforgivable crime; while, on the other hand, the mere fact of my having any dealings at all with them might place me in jeopardy with the authorities.
It was for this reason that I had resolved to prevent von Felsen having any knowledge of the part I was playing until the very last moment. I should not be a free man for an hour after he got wind of the thing, unless I was in a position to call a halt by means of my knowledge of his own acts.
From Ziegler I went to Chalice, and found matters in a pretty muddle. Ever since I had seen her two days before she had been in a condition of excited indecision; and as I had not gone to her, she had sent for Prince von Graven. He was there when I arrived, and she had just told him all I had said to her.
His reception of me may be imagined. He looked as if it would have given him the pleasure of his life to run me through there and then, and his furiously indignant denunciation of my interference in the affair matched his looks.
A very warm altercation followed, in the course of which it came out that the Kaiser had heard the rumours in regard to the Prince and Althea. Chalice watched us both and appeared to side with each in turn. She evidently wished to be able both to marry a man of his high rank, and yet to secure the triumph of the promised Court patronage.
At length I began to find myself losing command of my temper under the fire of his invective, so I held my tongue and let him rage at will.
"If ill temper would solve the difficulty we should very soon settle it," I declared, when a pause gave me a chance to speak. "But we are not doing an atom of good by all this talk. The thing is perfectly simple: Fräulein Chalice can either give up this chance or give up you. One of the two sacrifices she must make, and if we stay here and talk till to-morrow morning we can't alter the position."