“You are in earnest?” she asked quietly.
“Of course! I have thousands of persons who will do this for what I offered you—or a tenth the sum.”
“But do it as well? Anyone else who could draw him into a revolutionary plot—so that it will be safe for you—so that the blame will all be on him? Eh, prince?”
“Your demand is absurd!” he said.
“Then I will go no further with Mr. Drexel. You and I are through with this matter, I suppose. Well, I’m quite as well pleased with your refusal.” She started to rise. “Let us return to the others.”
“Wait, sit down,” he said sharply. She did so. “Tell me why you are just as well pleased with my refusal?”
“Perhaps,” said she calmly, “it may be in my mind that by breaking with you I may get something I prefer above your fifty thousand.”
“And that?”
“I do not choose to discuss my purpose,” she said, mimicking his cold sentence of a moment before.
At this “checkmate” he bit the inner edge of his thin lip.