"This, mademoiselle. You called at Le Quai d'Orsay this morning and brought something away with you that you ought not to have done. Now the position is simple. You will give it to me, and no more will be said. If you do not, I shall compel you."

"Compel!" she cried, with a glint of spirit in her eyes. "Compel, madame."

"Compel, mademoiselle."

For an instant she seemed inclined to resent my emphatic demand, but with a careless shrug of the shoulders she turned to me again, and handed me that wretched book on Martinique.

I only drew my breath and gazed at her, my temper rising dangerously as I realized the utter uselessness of the course I had taken with this woman. A sudden surprise, because I had judged her young and inexperienced.

"I will not question your right, madame," she cried, with a fine touch of scorn. "You say you have come for that book, and I have given it to you. Shall we now say _au revoir_?"

"You must be deeply interested in Martinique," I viciously exclaimed; and she flushed until the color spread all over her cheeks, even invaded with a warm tint the whiteness of her neck, and yet, like a school-girl, she hung her head, and answered nothing.

"When the pretty women of Paris take to the study of government reports," I continued, with a sneer, endeavoring to irritate her until she spoke hastily, and perhaps gave me my opportunity, "there must indeed be other reasons in the background. Martinique doubtless possesses unique attractions for you, mademoiselle."

"This is shameful," she cried, springing pa.s.sionately to her feet, "and from you, Madame Lerestelle, one whom I have always admired."

"Tush!" I cried, impatiently; and I too rose and faced her. "Why did you call upon Monsieur Levive this morning? Only for a book on Martinique--only that?"

She gazed into my eyes with a strange look of surprise, and then her lips twitched for a second, and as she held her forefinger up to me she had the effrontery to smile in my face.

"_Ma cherie_," she cried, with a laugh; "you're jealous."

"Mademoiselle!"

"Tut, tut!" she cried. "Now don't deny it, because it is the only possible excuse for the way you have been talking to me. But a woman can easily excuse jealousy when she is not in love with the same man."

I was numbed with indignation at the manner in which this _ingenue_ played with me, and she had had the audacity to place her arm around my waist.

"Confidence for confidence, _ma chere_," she murmured. "My father discovered that Monsieur Deca.s.se and I loved each other, and had him transferred to Martinique, and," she looked up into my face, "even dry official reports of the progress of the island are interesting to me, because the man I love is there, and may even have written them."

Diplomacy vanished. I felt as helpless as a child in the hands of this innocent, whose ready tongue found such excuses, and with a spasm of rage I caught her by the wrist.

"Let us finesse no more, mademoiselle," I cried, sharply, "for the time is gone. I care for Martinique as much as you do, and you know what I have called for as well as I. Not this Yellow Book you brought away as an excuse, but the paper missing from Monsieur Roche's room. Will you give me that or not?"

"I do not understand you," she quietly replied.

"Give me that doc.u.ment which you, at your father's instigation, stole this morning."

She drew herself away, and her slight, girlish figure seemed to grow in dignity before me.

"How dare you?" she said. "How dare you?"

"I dare anything, when you have ruined the man I love. Give me that paper?"

"You are mad!"

"Mad or not, mademoiselle, I do not leave this house--"

"Monsieur Desormes desires to see you in his study, mademoiselle."

The servant withdrew, and I turned again to her.

"And now," I cried, and my blood throbbed hotly in my veins, "now you will still say you know nothing of this theft?"

"I say nothing now," she scornfully retorted. "You shall come with me and hear what I have to say."

She walked almost unconcernedly towards the door, and then turned and faced me.

"Follow me, Madame Lerestelle," she cried, and in bitter tones added, "and follow me closely, lest a day should come when you will a.s.sert I gave my father the clew of what he should speak to you."

And, with no qualms of conscience, I followed her, and so closely that we entered Monsieur Desormes's study together.

He was what those who are foreigners to us would describe as "the typical Frenchman." Though his years must have been fifty, he looked scarcely forty, and his upright military carriage, his dark mustache waxed to dagger points, and close-cropped hair, made him appear even younger still. He was what his appearance proclaimed him, an urbane, clever, and unscrupulous diplomat. He rose and graciously bowed to me, even as though I were an expected guest.

"Your visit is a pleasure as illimitable in its delight as in its surprise, madame," he softly murmured.

"Yet a most unfitting moment for pedantic compliments," Mlle. Desormes warmly interjected; and I marvelled at the rage that still blazed within her eyes.

"I called on Monsieur Levive at the Quai d'Orsay this morning," she continued, turning sharply upon her father; "why I did so concerns but you and me alone. To-day a paper has been stolen from Monsieur Roche's room, which adjoins Monsieur Levive's, and I am charged with the theft."

Monsieur Desormes's eyebrows shot upward. "You?" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"I," she answered, in cold pa.s.sion. "I am accused of this theft. My name is linked with that of Monsieur Levive, as the one who tempted him to dishonor. My name--can you realize the stigma, monsieur?"

"I can realize no connection of circ.u.mstances," he replied, contemptuously, and she crossed the room, and, laying her hand upon his desk, looked him full in the face.

"It seems that this paper incriminated you," she exclaimed; and I saw that then he started.

"It is a paper that pledged you to support, or, at any rate, not to oppose, the ministry, monsieur," I interrupted; "and it has been stolen."

"I am aware of that, madame. I decided that it was better for France not to keep that pledge."

"But not better for me," mademoiselle cried, "and I am even before France."

"It is your own folly that has caused you to be suspected," he responded.

"It is the devices that men call dishonesty and statesmen diplomacy,"

she answered; and he put his arm around her waist and drew her back until she was seated upon the edge of his chair.

"Pretty little girls must not use cynical epigrams," he said, softly, as one petting a spoiled child. "Now, come, what is it you want?"

"I want nothing," she burst out, indignantly, "but I demand justice. I demand to be freed from this insinuation of theft. I do not ask, I demand, that Monsieur Levive, who is innocent, shall be relieved from suspicion, and you shall confess how you have stolen this paper."

"Purloined, _ma pet.i.te_," he exclaimed, as he playfully pinched her ear.

"Stolen," she doggedly repeated. "Stolen, not caring whom you ruined, man or woman."