She had drawn back and stood facing him steadily. “I will give you nothing more, I tell you,” she said resolutely. “Your conjuring tricks have been already overpaid.”
“Tricks?” he screamed. “You dare to blaspheme our sublime art and mysteries. You know not the risk you run, how near the brink of deadly horror you stand. You shall see your destiny. The fates are not to be invoked lightly. You came here to know the future, you shall know it and shall pay for the knowledge.”
The design of intimidation and extortion was manifest now in all its vulgar brutality, but the quack had in his victim, although a woman, yet a woman of character and spirit.
“Not one kreutzer more,” she maintained. “I have had enough of this nonsense and your rudeness. Show me the way out of this place.”
“Not till you have satisfied my just demands,” he returned with an ugly look of menace. “The revelation has been invoked for you and you shall pay for it whether you look or not.”
She took a step towards the door. He sprang forward and intercepted her.
“Not so, Princess. You go not till you give what I demand.”
Mortified as she was at having put herself in the man’s power and at risking the discovery of her identity which was sure to excite his greed, she yet never lost her presence of mind.
“You will let me go at once, fellow,” she said haughtily, “or it will be the worse for you.”
But he judged shrewdly that it might be the worse for him in any event. “You will pay me to the utmost of your power or it will be the worse for you,” he retorted. “I am sorry to have to speak to you bluntly, Princess, but necessity cannot dance attendance on fine speeches or miss golden opportunities, eh?”