The ring of indifference, or something dangerously near it, in Etta’s voice had first been noticeable the previous evening, and the attache knew it.  It had been in her voice whenever she spoke to him then.  It was there now.

“Some things,” he continued, in a voice she had never heard before, for this man was innately artificial, “which a woman usually knows before they are told to her.”

“What sort of things, M. le Baron?”

He gave a little laugh.  It was so strange a thing to him to be sincere that he felt awkward and abashed.  He was surprised at his own sincerity.

“That I love you—­hum.  You have known it long?”

The face which he could not see was not quite the face of a good woman.  Etta was smiling.

“No—­o,” she almost whispered.

“I think you must have known it,” he corrected suavely.  “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

It was very correctly done, Claude de Chauxville had regained control over himself.  He was able to think about the riches which were evidently hers.  But through the thought he loved the woman.

The lady lowered the feather screen which she was holding between her face and the fire.  Regardless of the imminent danger in which she was placing her complexion, she studied the glowing cinders for some moments, weighing something or some persons in her mind.

“No, my friend,” she answered in French, at length.

The baron’s face was drawn and white.  Beneath his trim black mustache there was a momentary gleam of sharp white teeth as he bit his lip.

He came nearer to her, leaning one hand on the back of her chair, looking down.  He could only see the beautifully dressed hair, the clean-cut profile.  She continued to look into the fire, conscious of the hand close to her shoulder.

“No, my friend,” she repeated.  “We know each other too well for that.  It would never do.”

“But when I tell you that I love you,” he said quietly, with his voice well in control.

“I did not know that the word was in your vocabulary—­you, a diplomat.”

“And a man—­you put the word there—­Etta.”

The hand-screen was raised for a moment in objection—­presumably to the Christian name of which he had made use.

He waited; passivity was one of his strong points.  It had frightened men before this.

Then, with a graceful movement, she swung suddenly round in her chair, looking up at him.  She broke into a merry laugh.

“I believe you are actually in earnest!” she cried.

He looked quietly down into her face without moving a muscle in response to her change of humor.

“Very clever,” he said.

“What?” she asked, still smiling.

“The attitude, the voice, every thing.  You have known all along that I am in earnest, you have known it for the last six months.  You have seen me often enough when I was—­well, not in earnest, to know the difference.”