V
Just why Kestner hesitated was not quite clear to himself. To break through a pine door, he knew, was easy enough, but it was not so easy to face the predicament of appearing ridiculous in Maura Lambert's eyes. His intrusion now could never be a dignified one. Among other things he was sadly in need of his shoes—and few men can hope to be impressive without their footwear. He was also a little ashamed of his rusty brown apparel. But he was more ashamed of the thought that around him would necessarily hang the odium of the eavesdropper, of the spy and lurker behind closed doors. He dreaded to face the woman in the next room. He would seem doubly ignoble before her now, swept as she was by her expiatory passion of renunciation. She was in some way above him, exalted by an emotion which he could not share with her. She was facing the light, for the first time in her life, and in that hour of illumination he himself would cut but a sorry figure. For a moment or two the Secret Agent almost hated his calling.
But all thought on the matter was ended by an abrupt movement from the next room. Kestner had no means of determining just what had prompted Carlesi's action. There was nothing to show that any sign or word had been passed in to the Italian in the printing-room. But some message, Kestner felt, must
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