“Yes, I sewed them in that day when I made you go out for a walk at Przlepka. Doesn’t it seem a long time ago? I dared not hide them in my pockets. The girdle is the most precious thing in the world. It has been handed down in secret in my father’s family since the fall of Czarigrad.”
“But, Eirene, you had it—on you—when you told the brigands you had given up everything, and you let Captain Wylie swear that you had? He believed what you said.”
Eirene’s face showed perplexity. “Yes,” she said, “I know. Sometimes I have wished that I had not done it, when I saw how you and Maurice thought of such things. But then I remembered that I could not possibly have let it go, so I felt that there was nothing else to be done.”
“You are not really sorry,” said Zoe with severity. “If you were, I suppose you would give it up to the brigands now.”
“That is quite impossible,” said Eirene calmly.
“Well, you must have a funny sort of conscience. You are afraid something will happen to you because you have to sleep in a church, and yet you tell a deliberate lie without a qualm.”
“We need not have slept in the church. The other could not be avoided,” said Eirene.
“Well, I expect the something has happened already, through your talking to Vlasto. I feel more and more certain he is a spy, and no doubt he will manage to get the girdle from you somehow. Milosch is quite capable of having told him what to say.”
“But how should Milosch know who I am?”
“By putting two and two together, I suppose, like the Professor. Oh, Eirene, if you have kept us from being set free next week, I shall never—— Well, do you think that we could ever forgive you?”