I looked at my watch,
pretended to be surprised, and said I must go at once. I couldn't bear
to waste a second in hurrying the treaty off, so that it might the more
quickly be on its way back. I hadn't come to visit Raoul in my own
carriage, but in a cab, which was waiting. As Raoul was taking me to it,
Count Godensky got out of a motor-brougham, and saw me. If only it had
been anywhere except in front of the Foreign Office! I told myself there
was no reason why he should guess that anything was wrong, but I was in
such a state of nerves that, as he raised his hat, and his eyebrows, I
fancied that he imagined all sorts of things, and I felt myself grow red
and pale. What a fool I was--and how weak! But I couldn't help it. I
didn't wait to go home. I wrote a few lines in the cab, and sent off the
packet, registered, in time I hoped, to catch the post--but after all,
it didn't. Coming out from the post office, there was Godensky again, in
his motor-brougham. _That_ could have been no coincidence. A horrid
certainty sprang to life in me that he'd followed my cab from the
Foreign Office, to see where I would go. Why couldn't I have thought of
that danger? I have always thought of things, and guarded against them;
yet this time, this time of all others, I seemed fated.
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