"You devil!" he resumed, sneering now in all his ugliness of wine and rage and disappointment. "What were _you?_ Mistress of the prince of France! Toy of a score of nobles! Slave of that infamous rake, your husband! Much you've got in your life to make you uppish now with me!" "My lord," she said evenly, "retract that. If you do not, you shall not leave this place alive." In some way she mastered him, even in his ugly mood. "Well, well," he growled, "I admit we don't get on very well in our little love affair; but I swear you drive me out of my mind. I'll never find another woman in the world like you. It's Sir Richard Pakenham asks you to begin a new future with himself." "We begin no future, my lord." "What do you mean? Have you lied to me? Do you mean to break your word--your promise?" "It is within the hour that I have learned what the truth is." "God damn my soul!" I heard him curse, growling. "Yes, my lord," she answered, "God will damn your soul in so far as it is that of a brute and not that of a gentleman or a statesman." I heard him drop into a chair. "This from one of your sort!" he half whimpered. "Stop, now!" she cried. "Not one word more of that! I say within the hour I have learned what is the truth. I am Helena von Ritz, thief on the cross, and at last clean!" "God A'might, Madam! How pious!" he sneered. "Something's behind all this. I know your record. What woman of the court of Austria or France comes out with _morals?_ We used you here because you had none. And now, when it comes to the settlement between you and me, you talk like a nun. As though a trifle from virtue such as yours would be missed!" "Ah, my God!" I heard her murmur. Then again she called to me, as he thought to himself; so that all was as it had been, for the time. A silence fell before she went on. "Sir Richard," she said at length, "we do not meet again. I await now your full apology for these things you have said. Such secrets as I have learned of England's, you know will remain safe with me. Also your own secret will be safe. Retract, then, what you have said, of my personal life!" "Oh, well, then," he grumbled, "I admit I've had a bit of wine to-day. I don't mean much of anything by it. But here now, I have come, and by your own invitation--your own agreement. Being here, I find this treaty regarding Oregon torn in two and you gone nun all a-sudden." "Yes, my lord, it is torn in two. The consideration moving to it was not valid. But now I wish you to amend that treaty once more, and for a consideration valid in every way. My lord, I promised that which was not mine to give--myself! Did you lay hand on me now, I should die. If you kissed me, I should kill you and myself! As you say, I took yonder price, the devil's shilling. Did I go on, I would be enlisting for the damnation of my soul; but I will not go on. I recant!"