I was quivering all over. But I had not lost hope yet; I think that some women, feeling as I did, would have fainted. But it would have been better for me to die and be out of my troubles for ever, than to let myself faint and show Godensky that he had struck home.
“Be quiet. Be cool. Be brave now, if never again,” I said to myself. And my voice sounded perfectly natural as I exclaimed: “Oh, the ‘document’ again. The one you spoke about when we first met to-night. You rouse my curiosity. But I don’t in the least know what you mean.”
“The loss of it is known,” he said.
“Ah, it’s a lost document?”
“As you will be lost, Maxine, if you don’t come to me for the help I’m only too glad to give—on conditions. Let me tell you what they are.”
“Wouldn’t it be more to the point if you told me what the document is, and how it concerns me?” I parried him, determined to bring him to bay.
“Aren’t you evading the point far more than I? The document—which you and I can both see as plainly before our eyes at this instant as though it were in—let us say your hands, or—du Laurier’s, if he were here—that document is far too important even to name within hearing of other ears.”
“Marianne’s? But I told you she can’t understand a word of Russian.”
“One can’t be sure. We can never tell, in these days, who may not be—a spy.”
There was a stab for me! But I would not give him the satisfaction of showing that it hurt. He wanted to confuse me, to put me off my guard; but he should not.