It was a chance, well, scarcely to be missed.

For, you see, it was my intention to meet His Highness, the Prince Ignace Slevenski Pobloff, under slightly different circumstances than would prevail if he and his valet should quietly step through that door at the present moment!" She laughed, a little bitterly, with a reckless shrug of the shoulders.
Durkin, nettled by the sound of tragedy in her voice, did not like the sound of that laugh.

Then, as he looked at her more critically, he saw that she was white and worn and tired.

But it was the words over which she had laughed which sent him abruptly hurrying into the next room with a lighted match, to read the hour from the little Swiss clock above the cabinet.
"If we're after anything here we've got to get it!" he said, with conscious roughness.

"It's later than I thought." "Very well," she answered, quietly enough.
Then she turned to him, as he waited with his hand on the bedroom light-button, before switching it off.
"You need never be afraid that I will bother you with any more of my hesitations, and scruples, and half-timid qualms, as I once did.