“If you authorize me to be outspoken, madame, I will enlighten you,” returned Cantagnac.

“Do not let me be in your way!” impertinently.

“It is the most simple thing, for your entire character is described in these four words:  venal, ferocious, frivolous and insubmissive!”

She sprang to her feet with quivering lips and flashing eyes, while he, like a statue, lowered upon its pedestal, calmly sank upon an arm-chair.  Then, looking round and listening to make certain that they had no observers, he leaned both elbows on the table and fixed his sea-blue eyes on the startled lady.

“Kaiserina!” he said in a commanding voice, without the least softening with that southern suavity, “for how much do you want to sell me secretly, your husband’s invention?”

The altered voice appeared not at all strange, but the words were so unexpected that she merely stared in bewilderment while he had even more deliberately to repeat them.  Deeply frightened by this mystery which in vain she tried to solve, she forced a laugh.

“Oh, it is no jest—­I am one of the most serious of men,” proceeded Cantagnac, “as becomes one of the busiest.”

She looked at him like a fawn, which, having never seen a human being, is suddenly peered upon in the lair by the hunter.

“You want to know who I am, speaking to you in this style?  See my card on the table there—­it says I am Cantagnac, the agent, modest but passing for rather subtle, of a private and limited company recently established with a cash capital fully paid up of several millions of fredericks—­for, to tell the plain facts to you—­the obtaining for its profit the ideas, inventions and discoveries of others.  In short, we, who used to despise mental fruits, see that it is the most profitable of trades to work genius.  As soon as we see, learn, or even scent that an important thing is being produced anywhere in the world, we hurry to the spot and by one means or another—­money, cunning, persuasion, main force, if needs must, we make ourselves master of what we must have if we mean to be the world’s rulers.  With a European war impending, even a lady will see at once of what value an invention is, like M. Clemenceau’s.”

“In plain language, you are proposing to me an infamous deed!” she exclaimed with scathing irony which failed to scare the other.

“I am proposing a matter of business.  Where are you going?”

“Straight to my husband—­whose confidence you have imposed on by some deception”

“Dear madame, do not do what you would eternally deplore,” said Cantagnac quietly, and motioning with his broad hand for her to be seated again.  “I deceived your husband with a bit of character acting which you would, I think, have applauded, as you were once on the stage—­the music hall stage, at least.”

She sat down, as if this allusion had stunned her.

“His secret is indispensable to my company and I was given instructions to try to obtain it, by surprise and for nothing, if possible.  Without it, many another purchase of ours made at great expense, would become utterly useless.  From an incomplete acquaintance with your husband, I feared I could do nothing with him; from a study of him here, at a later period, I doubted still more; and, having spoken with him, I am sure.”