"Without my sanction?" "Don't you intend to give it? It surely is no affair of yours?" "No, I shall not give it," he answered carelessly tossing his dead cigar-end into the ash-tray. "Liane shall never become your wife." "What! you would tell her?" Zertho gasped, his face suddenly pale and anxious. "I have already told you that I'm not in the habit of showing my opponent my hand." "I love Liane. I must marry her," he blurted forth. "Love! Fancy you, Zertho d'Auzac, declaring that you love a woman!" the man exclaimed, laughing heartily in derision. "The thing's too absurd. I know you too well." Zertho bit his lip. If any other man had spoken thus he would have knocked him down; but, truth to tell, he was afraid of this dark-faced, crafty-eyed Englishman. Since first he had known him, in the days when he was down on his luck, he had always felt an antipathy towards him, because he treated everything and everybody with such amazingly cool indifference. He saw that money only would appease him. He calculated roughly how much he had already paid him, and the reflection caused him to knit his brows. "A few minutes ago you said it was a question of price," he said at length. "Well, what are your views?" "Since then they have changed." "Changed! How?" "You say that I have received from you all that you intend I shall receive. Well, let it remain so. You will not marry her." Zertho regarded him with a puzzled expression. "I asked you to name your price," he said. "What is it?" Max Richards, lying back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head, turned towards his visitor and answered,-- "I have offered to treat with you, but you refused. My offer is therefore withdrawn. I have enough money at present. When I want more I shall come to you." "But, my dear fellow," exclaimed Zertho, dismayed, "you cannot mean that you refuse to accept anything further for the slight service you have, up to the present, rendered me?" "Our compact is at an end," the man answered coldly. "No word will pass my lips on one condition, namely, that you release Liane, and--" "I will never do that!" he cried in fierce determination. "She shall be my wife. Come, name your own terms." "Ah! I thought you would not be so unwise as to utterly defy me!" exclaimed the man, smiling in triumph. "The prize is too great to relinquish, eh?" Zertho nodded. "Come, don't name a figure too exorbitant. Let it be within reason," he said. "It will be entirely within reason," the other answered, fixing his dark eyes intently upon Zertho's. "Well?" "Nothing!" he laughed. "Nothing? I don't understand." "I want nothing," he repeated, rousing himself, and bending forward in the lamplight, his eyes still fixed upon the man he was addressing. "You refuse?"