"What if I refuse?"
"Then we part company. You go one way, I another. You are truly a beggar, and can take up no other position without my aid. You have a story to tell which no one will believe, for I alone hold the proofs. Talk much about your fine secret, and what will be the result? People will think you off your head. Be guided by me, and all comes right in the end and in the meantime we share the spoils."
"The spoils," said Josephine, "what do you mean?
"I can give you a practical answer, Nina. I have made a good bargain, a splendid bargain; seeing that I have only put on the first screw, my success has largely anticipated my wildest hopes. Josephine, my poor girl, you need no longer suffer the pangs of hunger and neglect. You and I are no longer penniless. What do you say to an income? What do you say to four hundred a year?"
Josephine put up her thin, white hand to her forehead.
"Four hundred a year?" she repeated, vaguely. "I don't quite know what it means. What have we now?"
"Anything or nothing. Sometimes a pound a week, sometimes two pounds, sometimes five shillings."
"And we have in the future?"
"Didn't I tell you, child? Four hundred a year. One hundred pounds paid regularly every quarter. Got without earning, got without toiling for. Ours whether we are sick or well; ours under any circumstances from this day forward; ours just for keeping a little bit of a secret to ourselves."
"A secret which keeps me out of my own."