I stared at her, feeling more than ever like one in a dream.

“I gave you the only thing I brought,” I said.  “It was in my breast pocket, inside my coat.  I took it out, and put it in your hands.  There was no other thing.  Look again in the sofa.  It must be there still.  This red case is something else—­we can try to account for it later.  It all came through the lights not working.  If it hadn’t been dusk you would have seen that I gave you a dark green leather letter-case—­quite different from this, though of about the same length—­rather less thick, and—­”

Frantically she began ransacking the crevice between the seat and back of the sofa, but nothing was there.  We might have known there could be nothing or the Commissary of Police would have been before us.  With a cry she cut me short at last throwing up her hands in despair.  She was deathly pale again, and all the light had gone out of her eyes leaving them dull as if she had been sick with some long illness.

“What will become of me?” she stammered.  “The treaty lost!  My God—­what shall I do?  Ivor, you are killing me.  Do you know—­you are killing me?”

The word “treaty” was new to me in this connection, for the Foreign Secretary had not thought it necessary that his messenger should be wholly in his secrets—­and Maxine’s.  Yet hearing the word brought no great surprise.  I knew that I had been cat’s-paw in some game of high stakes.  But it was of Maxine I thought now, and the importance of the loss to her, not the national disaster which it might well be also.

“Wait,” I said, “don’t despair yet.  There’s some mistake.  Perhaps we shall be able to see light when we’ve thrashed this out and talked it over.  I know I had a green letter-case.  It never left my pocket.  I thought of it and guarded it every moment.  Could those diamonds have been inside it?  Could the Foreign Secretary had given me the necklace, instead of what you expected?”

“No, no,” she answered with desperate impatience.  “He knew that the only thing which could save me was the document I’d sent him.  I wired that I must have it back again immediately, for my own sake—­for his—­for the sake of England.  Ivor!  Think again.  Do you want me to go mad?”

“I will think,” I said, trying to speak reassuringly.  “Give me a moment—­a quiet moment—­”

“A quiet moment,” she repeated, bitterly, “when for me each second is an hour!  It’s late, and this is the night of my new play.  Soon, I must be at the theatre, for the make-up and dressing of this part for the first act are a heavy business.  I don’t want all Paris to know that Maxine de Renzie has been ruined by her enemies.  Let us keep the secret while we can, for others’ sakes, and so gain time for our own, if all is not lost—­if you believe still that there’s any hope.  Oh, save me, Ivor—­somehow.  My whole life is in this.”

“Let your understudy take your part to-night, while we think, and work,” I suggested.  “You cannot go to the theatre in this state.”