"Sassoon, what's my price?" she asked abruptly.
"I didn't say you had one."
"You said all women you wanted."
"Miss Baxter," he said slowly, "you began this conversation."
"Yes—and let's drop all pretenses; let's talk to each other, since we are here. Let me know you as you really are. I wish it!"
"Very well!" he said, pleased. He rested his elbows likewise on the table, scanning his left hand, turning the great emerald ring that adorned it. "I believe every woman has her price, under certain conditions: first, that you know the need of money, and, most important, that you are old enough to understand what things can be bought!"
"I am not sure! You are very romantic," he said, and as she laughed at this interpretation, he continued: "If you were thirty instead of twenty-two, you could not make a mistake!"
"That's a curious way to put it!"
"I am not speaking of ten thousand or twenty thousand dollars," he said quietly. "You are the exception. You are the sort of woman that would hold a man for years. Miss Baxter, do you remember what the Comte de Joncy told you?"