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from the opera Adrienne rushed straight to her room and locked herself in. Margit has stayed near her, in the bathroom next door, as she doesn’t dare to leave her entirely alone. She is very worried.’
    They did not speak again. As they drove out of town towards the Uzdy villa on the Monostor road all that could be heard was the clatter of the horses’ hooves on the paving-stones; and to both men the five minutes’ journey seemed far longer. As they drove along Balint could think only of one thing, the small Browning revolver, that deadly little weapon which Adrienne had once asked him to buy for her, though she had carefully concealed from him that even then she had thought of killing herself with it. Since that day, and especially when a little later they had parted, perhaps for ever, after the month they had spent together in Venice, the thought of that revolver had haunted him, for he knew how uncompromising she was and also how hauntedshe was by the spectre of that ultimate solution to her troubles.
    And now the spectre walked again, and perhaps what he had always feared had finally been accomplished. He was in agony lest they should arrive too late to prevent what he knew instinctively to be uppermost in her mind …
    The carriage stopped in front of the wrought-iron screen which divided the villa’s garden from the road. Adam opened the little-used side gate with his own key and called to the coachman to wait where he was. Then he and Balint hurried in, past the long dark single-storeyed wing of the house which reached almost to the banks of the Szamos and which contained Adrienne’s own apartments, and entered the building through the glazed veranda that ran along one side of the main entrance court. Adam at once turned not to the right, to the door to Adrienne’s sitting-room , but to another door at the left which led to her bathroom.
    They went in as quietly as possible. Inside they found Margit crouched at the end of a narrow bench with her ear pressed to the keyhole of the door which opened into the bedroom. Hunched up like that she might have been taken for a young girl if her advanced state of pregnancy had not shown her to be a grown woman. As soon as they entered the room she turned towards them and got up. Then she drew Balint to her side and, speaking very softly but with great determination, said:
    ‘Thank goodness you’ve come! Now you must stay right here. It’s all right, I know you’re expected at that supper party but Adam will go in your place and will explain that you’re not feeling at all well. It won’t look at all strange as everyone will have noticed that you left the theatre early, and they’ll think it most considerate to have sent someone in your place. No one will be at all put out.’ She turned to her husband, saying: ‘You did keep the carriage, didn’t you? You’d better hurry now. I’m sure you’ll carry it all off excellently … Oh, and you’d better send back the carriage as we may need it. Tell the man to wait and give him the key to the small gate.’
    Margit had obviously worked everything out in advance and, being cool-headed no matter how anxious she might be, gave her orders clearly and simply.
    As soon as Adam had gone she turned to Balint and, in a whisper that could not have been heard from the next room, told him exactly what had happened that day. In the morning Adrienne had got back from Lausanne where she had gone to place her daughter in a boarding school. Countess Gyalakuthyhad heard of her return and asked her to join the others in her box that evening. She said that somehow she didn’t much like the idea, that opera was not really for her, ‘… but as we thought you were at Denestornya …’
    ‘I only came up for this evening.’
    ‘Yes, but we didn’t know that then. Anyhow it’s beside the point. I was sitting beside her in the box and I could see her face. It was terrible, because I know her so well … but nobody else noticed