ional
and broad-minded view of your little transaction with M. Vassili; more
especially, perhaps, as it banished his friend Stepan Lanovitch--the
owner of this house, by the way. His reception of the news I have to
tell him would be unpleasant--for you."

"What do you want?" interrupted Etta. "Money?"

"I am not a needy adventurer."

"And I am not such a fool, M. de Chauxville, as to allow myself to be
dragged into a vulgar intrigue, borrowed from a French novel, to satisfy
your vanity."

De Chauxville's dull eyes suddenly flashed.

"I will trouble you to believe, madame," he said, in a low, concentrated
voice, "that such a thought never entered my head. A De Chauxville is
not a commercial traveller, if you please. No; it may surprise you, but
my feeling for you has more good in it than you would seem capable of
inspiring. God only knows how it is that a bad woman can inspire a good
love."

Etta looked at him in amazement. She did not always understand De
Chauxville. No matter for surprise, perhaps; for he did not always
understand himself.

"Then what do you want?" she asked.

"In the meantime, implicit obedience."

"What are you going to use me for?"

"I have ends," replied Claude de Chauxville, who had regained his usual
half-mocking composure, "that you will serve. But they will be your ends
as well as mine. You will profit by them. I will take very good care
that you come to no harm, for you are the ultimate object of all this.
At the end of it all I see only--you."

Etta shrugged her shoulders. It is to be presumed that she was
absolutely heartless. Many women are. It is when a heartless woman has
brains that one hears of her.

"What if I refuse?" asked Etta, keenly aware of the fact that this man
was handicapped by his love for her.

"Then I will force you to obedience."

Etta raised her delicate eyebrows insolently.

"Ah!"

"Yes," said De Chauxville, with suppressed anger; "I will force you to
obey me."

The princess looked at him with her little mocking smile. She raised one
hand to her head with a reflective air, as if a hair-pin were of greater
importance than his words. She had dressed herself rather carefully for
this interview. She never for a moment overlooked the fact that she was
a woman, and beautiful. She did not allow him to forget it either.

Her mood of outraged virtue was now suddenly thrown into the background
by a phase of open coquetry. Beneath her eyelids she watched f