"If the servants should hear me?" she faltered.
"You say only 'I await the Prince'," La Belle Nita murmured. "That key
never leaves his own person save for one in great favour. They will
believe that he gave it to you. You will be unmolested."
A queer sensation suddenly assailed Maggie. She felt extraordinarily
primitive, ridiculously feminine. She looked at the girl opposite to
her, the girl whose body was draped in perfumed silks, whose face was
thick with rice powder, whose eyes were sad. She felt no pity. What
feeling she had, she did not care to analyse.
"Is this your key?" she asked.
"It was mine once, but its use has been forbidden to me," the girl
replied. "Prince Shan is a changed man. Something has come into his life
of which I know nothing, but as it has come, so must I go. I give you
your chance, lady, but already I weaken. Go quickly, if you go at all.
Please leave me, for I am very unhappy."
Maggie stole quietly out and made her way through the jostling throng
back to her own box, which for the moment was empty. She slipped on her
cloak, and from the hidden spaces where she stood she looked across the
auditorium. The silent figure in green silk robes was still seated in
his place, his eyes following the movements of the dancers, his head a
little thrown back, a slight weariness in his face. He was still alone.
He still had the air of being alone because it was his desire. Once he
looked up towards the box in which she was, and Maggie, although she
knew she was invisible, shrank back against the wall.
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