But I never knew that blessed feeling until I met Raoul du Laurier.

It was a heavenly rest now to lay my head for a minute on his shoulder, just shutting my eyes, without speaking a word.
I thought--for I was worn out, body and soul, with the strain of keeping up and hiding my secret--that when I was dead the best paradise would be to lean so on Raoul's shoulder, never moving, for the first two or three hundred years of eternity.

But as the peaceful fancy cooled my brain, back darted remembrance, like a poisonous snake.

I reminded myself how little I deserved such a paradise, and how my lover's dear arms would put me away, in a kind of unbelieving horror, if he knew what I had done, and how I had betrayed his trust in me.
For ten years I'd been a political spy--yes.

But I owed a grudge to Russia, which I'd promised my father to pay: and France is Russia's ally.