He shut his eyes, abruptly saw her at her worst, as he detested seeing her: an amateur whore with an excess of rouge. He drew the blankets up to his shivering neck and remembered her at her best: inspired by more than a wealthy man, a woman-child unable to resist taking, and leaving, what she wanted at will. All promiscuity was a search, he supposed, even, perhaps for some sort of martyrdom. Well, love, God help us, you're about to find it. After a lifetime of affairs on your terms you're involved in one with no pity, no bleeding heart. Zelle . . . Zelle . . .

He dozed, with half-formed images of that first afternoon they had met. He slept, then woke again at dawn, to find that nothing had changed.

He stayed in bed for five days. After a physician had been called to give him an injection, he slept through most of it.

Of course Zelle was gone by the time he was well enough to leave his bed . . . presumably waltzing back to Paris in order to collect her reward for having outsmarted German Intelligence. (There was a story told to Gray by a certain Senator Junoy, who had dined with Zelle just before her departure. According to Junoy, Zelle had returned to Paris in a rage after learning that French agents were still spreading the word that she wasn't to be trusted. And as for von Kalle, he, too, it seemed, no longer was entranced by her after she had refused to undress in his office.)

At any rate she had gone back to Paris, leaving Gray in the midst of another cold spell with nothing except a lingering fever and three or four sketches from their first night together. It also occurred to him that the physician with the sleep-inducing injections might well have been provided by . . . Southerland? Dunbar? Cazeaux? Good fellows all, all patriots in the service of their countries.

After cabling London with a brief description of his circumstances, he waited another whole week before receiving a reply. Then it seemed that they only wanted him back in England . . . presumably to ruin someone else's life.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Seven

THEY came for her on the morning of February 13, 1917—five inspectors under the command of Police Chief Priolet. Having only just gotten up after a night at the Opera, she received them in her dressing gown. The formal accusation read:

The woman Zelle, Margaretha, otherwise known as Mata Hari, residing at the Palace Hotel, of Protestant faith and Dutch nationality, five feet eight inches tall, being able to read and write, is accused of espionage, tentative complicity and intelligence with the enemy, in an effort to assist them with their operations.