But the outrages with which you reproach
me have served to show that when my orders are disobeyed I have power to
enforce them! Where I am not respected I am feared. I refused my consent
to the loan by aid of which Great Britain's enemies had designed to
prosecute a war against her. None of those theatrical displays with
which sometimes I have impressed the errant vulgar were necessary. The
greatest name in European finance was refused to the transaction--and
the Great War died in the hour of its birth!"

His eyes gleamed with almost fanatic ardour.

"For this will be forgotten all my errors, and forgiven all my sins!"

"I am sure of that," said Zoe earnestly. "But--whatever you came to
do----"

"I have not done--you would say? Only in part. Where I made my home in
London, you have seen a curtained recess. It held the Emblem of my
temporal power."

He moved his hand, and the sunlight struck green beams from the bezel of
the strange ring upon his finger. Zoe glanced at it with something that
was almost like fear.

"This," he said, replying, as was his uncanny custom to an unspoken
question, "is but the sign whereby I may be known for the holder of that
other Emblem. My house is empty now; the Emblem returns to the land
where it was fashioned."

"You are abandoning your projects--your mission? Why?"

"Perhaps because the sword is too heavy for the wielder. Perhaps because
I am only a man--and lonely."

The launch touched the pier, below them.

"You are the most loyal friend I have made in England--in Europe--in the
world," said Severac Bablon. "Good-bye."

Zoe was very pale.

"Do you mean--for--always?"

"When you have said 'Good-bye' to me I have nothing else to stay for."

Zoe glanced at him once and looked away. Her charming face suddenly
flushed rosily, and a breeze from the sea curtained the bright eyes with
intractable curls.

"But if I _won't_ say 'Good-bye'?" she whispered.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Sins of Severac Bablon, by Sax Rohmer

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