Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/85

 through novels, but through life. They all lead one way, and that way is down!"

The woman sitting opposite him did not speak for several moments. Her face was very white. Kestner could see the blue veining in the temple under the heavily massed chestnut hair. When she spoke she spoke very quietly.

"All this is very eloquent," she said, "and, I'm afraid, very obvious. But it is quite beside the mark. There are things you don't understand. But the fact remains that I am already with these people. And I intend to stay there until the end!"

"But what end?" demanded Kestner.

"It will not be the end you expect," was her tranquil-toned reply.

"I know your position, and I know what it leads to."

"Yet hopeless as that position appears, I may enjoy advantages unknown to my enemies."

"I am not your enemy. I have no desire to be."

"In that," she answered, "I cannot believe you."

"But I have nothing to gain in all this."

"That is the one thing I doubt," she replied, after a slight pause.

"How can I prove it?"

She pondered a moment.

"By going quietly through that door, returning to your hotel, and taking the night boat for Naples, and from Naples returning to Paris."

Kestner did not even smile.

"It will be for your own good," she warned him, "for your own safety."