"I wonder you don't hit upon the very obvious idea of putting an end to this pantomimic game of hide and seek. You have a foreign passport. You could enter your friend in it under some such description as major-domo or travelling companion. You could take him with you to Naples or to Paris, and you could live without care on the interest of the fund deposited at the Vienna bank."
"I know that."
"Then why not do it?"
"Because I don't choose."
And as she said this she looked strangely at me with her enigmatically mysterious eyes, in which heaven and hell were blended together like starlight in darkness!
CHAPTER XIV
THE DEMON'S BAIT
I said in the last chapter that the lady was looking straight into my eyes with the glance of Circe. Then she shrugged her shoulders, flung herself down beside the fire-ashes, and began to blow the cinders so as to entice a flame from the smouldering embers.
"It's useless to give advice to me, for I always do exactly the contrary. Let us rather have a chat together. What is your fate, now?"