"It is impossible--incredible!" she was saying to herself. "I could not love him like that. I should hate him. God above me, am I not different from those women whom I have known and pitied and despised? Am I not different from Guelma von Herrick? Am I not different from Prince Henri's wife? Ah, and they loved, too! And is _he_ not different from those other men--those weak, unmanly men, who came into the lives of those women? Ah, yes, yes! He _is_ different." She sat and stared out over the black sea, lighted fitfully by the distant lightning. There, she pronounced sentence upon him--and herself. There was no place for him in her world. He should feel her disdain--he should suffer for his presumption. Presumption? In what way had he offended? She put her hands to her eyes but her lips smiled--smiled with the memory of the kiss she had returned! "What a fool! What a fool I am," she cried aloud, springing up resolutely. "I _must_ forget. I told him I couldn't, but I--I can." Half way across the room she stopped, her hands clenched fiercely. "If--if Karl were only such as he!" she moaned. [Illustration: 'No' she said to herself, 'I told him I was keeping them for him.'] She went to her dressing table and resolutely unlocked one of the drawers, as one would open a case in which the most precious of treasures was kept. A cautious, involuntary glance over her shoulder, and then she ran her hand into the bottom of the drawer. "It was so silly of me," she muttered. "I shall not keep them for him." The drawer was partly filled with cigarettes. She took one from among the rest and placed its tip in her red lips, a reckless light in her eyes. A match was struck and then her hand seemed to be in the clutch of some invisible force. The light flickered and died in her fingers. A blush suffused her face, her eyes, her neck. Then with a guilty, shamed, tender smile she dropped the cigarette into the drawer. She turned the key. "No," she said to herself, "I told him that I was keeping them for him." CHAPTER XXVII THE TRIAL OF VON BLITZ The next morning found the weather unsettled. There had been a fierce storm during the night and a nasty mist was blowing up from the sea. Deppingham kept to his room, although his cold was dissipated. For the first time in all those blistering, trying months, they felt a chill in the air; raw, wet, unexpected.