Wrayson smiled across the table. "This is a very dangerous doctrine, Baroness!" he declared. "Dangerous?" she murmured. "For us! Remember that we are a susceptible race." She flung out her hands and shook her head. Susceptible! She denied it vehemently. "It is on the contrary," she declared. "You do not lose your heads or your hearts very easily, you Englishmen." "You do not know us," he protested. "I know _you_," she answered. "For myself, I admit it. When I am with a man who is nice, I try that I may make him, just a little, no more, but just a little in love with me. It makes things more amusing. It is better for him, and we are not bored. But with you, _mon ami, I_ know very well that I waste my time. And so, I ask you instead this question. Tell me why you have invited me to take luncheon with you." She flashed her question across at him carelessly enough, but he felt that she expected an answer, and that she was not to be deceived. "I wanted Miss Fitzmaurice's address," he said. "Naturally. But what else?" He sighed. "I want to know more than you will tell me, I am afraid," he said. "I want to know why you and Miss Fitzmaurice are living together in London and leading such an unusual life, and how in Heaven's name you became concerned in the affairs of Morris Barnes." "Ah!" she said. "You want to know that? So!" "I do," he admitted. "And yet," she remarked, "even for that it was not worth while to make love to me! You ask so much, my friend, and you give so little." "If you--" he began, a little awkwardly. Her light laugh stopped him. "Ah, no! my friend, you must not be foolish," she said. "I will tell you what I can for nothing, and that, I am afraid, is very little more than nothing. But as for offering me a bribe, you must not think of that. It would not be _comme-il-faut;_ not at all _gentil_." "Tell me what you can, then," he begged. She shrugged her shoulders. "It is so little," she declared; "only this. We are not adventuresses, Louise and I. We are living together because we were schoolfellows, and because we are both anxious to succeed in a certain undertaking to which, for different reasons, we have pledged ourselves. To succeed we needed some papers which had come into the hands of Mr. Morris Barnes. That is why I am civil to that little--what you call bounder, his brother." "It sounds reasonable enough, this," Wrayson said; "but what about the murder of Morris Barnes, on the very night, you know, when Louise was there?" "It is all a very simple matter," the Baroness answered, quietly, "but yet it is a matter where the death of a few such men would count for nothing. A few ages ago it would not have been a matter of a dozen Morris Barnes, no, nor a thousand! Diplomacy is just as cruel, and just as ruthless, as the battlefield, only it works, down there--underground!" "It is a political matter, then?" Wrayson asked swiftly. The Baroness smiled. She took a cigarette from her little gold case and lit it.