She awaited my reply with such gravity and impatience that I found the
situation unpleasant.

"Do YOU, rather, tell me," I said, "what is going on here? Why do you
seem half-afraid of me? I can see for myself what is wrong. You are the
step-daughter of a ruined and insensate man who is smitten with love
for this devil of a Blanche. And there is this Frenchman, too, with his
mysterious influence over you. Yet, you actually ask me such a
question! If you do not tell me how things stand, I shall have to put
in my oar and do something. Are you ashamed to be frank with me? Are
you shy of me?"

"I am not going to talk to you on that subject. I have asked you a
question, and am waiting for an answer."

"Well, then--I will kill whomsoever you wish," I said. "But are you
REALLY going to bid me do such deeds?"

"Why should you think that I am going to let you off? I shall bid you
do it, or else renounce me. Could you ever do the latter? No, you know
that you couldn't. You would first kill whom I had bidden you, and then
kill ME for having dared to send you away!"

Something seemed to strike upon my brain as I heard these words. Of
course, at the time I took them half in jest and half as a challenge;
yet, she had spoken them with great seriousness. I felt thunderstruck
that she should so express herself, that she should assert such a right
over me, that she should assume such authority and say outright:
"Either you kill whom I bid you, or I will have nothing more to do with
you." Indeed, in what she had said there was something so cynical and
unveiled as to pass all bounds. For how could she ever regard me as the
same after the killing was done? This was more than slavery and
abasement; it was sufficient to bring a man back to his right senses.
Yet, despite the outrageous improbability of our conversation, my heart
shook within me.

Suddenly, she burst out laughing. We were seated on a bench near the
spot where the children were playing--just opposite the point in the
alley-way before the Casino where the carriages drew up in order to set
down their occupants.

"Do you see that fat Baroness?" she cried. "It is the Baroness
Burmergelm. She arrived three days ago. Just look at her husband--that
tall, wizened Prussian there, with the stick in his hand. Do you
remember how he stared at us the other day? Well, go to the Baroness,
take off your hat to her, and say something in French."

"Why?"

"Because you have sworn th