“Then what did you mean?”
Her eyes again sought mine as if to read my thoughts. I threw up a blockading smile.
“How long will he be?”
“You play with me,” she exclaimed petulantly. “I do not make a pleasant plaything. M. Boreski will be here soon now. He will find some one to take his place and play hare to your police dogs—the dogs that were not to have been set upon us.”
“‘Us’?” I repeated with a lift of the eyebrows. “You do identify yourself with him then?”
She laughed.
“That is a man’s retort. Suspicion for suspicion; and it serves me right. Now that the time has come, I am not myself. I am too anxious. I do not understand—Americans. You make me feel as no other man as ever yet made me feel.”
Was this for the Emperor or for myself? I did not relish the problem and made no reply.
She sighed, and rising touched the bell, and remained standing while the servants came and removed the coffee-cups.
I was glad of the interval. It gave me time to remember my part and remember, too, how unstable was the ground I stood on.