"But remind yourself that the chemistry of years is such that inevitably a sense of obligation in due course turns into a grudge. It is true, Liane has not forgotten, but I am by no means sure she has forgiven me for saving her to life."
"There may be something in that, seeing what she has made of her life."
"Now there is where you can instruct me. I have been long in exile."
"But you know how Liane graduated from the chorus of the Variétés, became first a principal there, then the rage of all the music halls with her way of singing rhymed indecencies."
"One has heard something of that."
"On the peak of her success she retired, saying she had worked long enough, made enough money. That, too, knows itself. But Liane retired only from the stage... You understand?"
"Perfectly."
"She continued to make many dear friends, some of them among the greatest personages of Europe. So that gradually she became what she is to-day," Athenais Reneaux pronounced soberly: "as I think, the most dangerous woman on the Continent."
"How--'dangerous'?"
"Covetous, grasping, utterly unscrupulous and corrupt, and weirdly powerful. She has a strange influence in the highest places."