After a moment’s thought I said: “In your opinion, what nation profited by your sketches? Italy? Spain? Prussia? Bavaria? England?... Perhaps Russia?”
“Do you mean that this woman was a foreign spy?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps she was only careless, or capricious,... or inconstant.... You never saw her again?”
“I was under arrest on Sunday. I do not know.... I like to believe that she went to the book-store on 258 Monday,... that she made an innocent mistake,... but I never knew, Scarlett,... I never knew.”
“Suppose you ask her?” I said.
He reddened furiously.
“I cannot.... If she did me a wrong, I cannot reproach her; if she was innocent—look at me, Scarlett!—a ragged, ruined mountebank in a travelling circus,... and she is—”
“An honest woman that a man might care for?”
“That is ... my belief.”
“If she is,” I said, “go and ask her about those drawings.”