"Ah!" continued Severac Bablon, "that was a problem of a different kind. In every civilised land there is a power above the throne. Do you think that, unaided, Prussia ever could have conquered gallant France? The people who owe allegiance to the German Emperor are a great people, but, in such an undertaking as war, without the aid of that people who owe allegiance to _me_, they are helpless as a group of children! Had I been in 1870 what I am to-day, the Prussian arms had never been carried into Paris!" "You mean that a nation, to carry on a war, requires an enormous sum of money?" "Which can only be obtained from certain sources." "From the Jews?" "In part, at least. The finance of Europe is controlled by a group of Jewish houses." "But they are not all----" "Amenable to my orders? True. But the outrages with which you reproach me have served to show that when my orders are disobeyed I have power to enforce them! Where I am not respected I am feared. I refused my consent to the loan by aid of which Great Britain's enemies had designed to prosecute a war against her. None of those theatrical displays with which sometimes I have impressed the errant vulgar were necessary. The greatest name in European finance was refused to the transaction--and the Great War died in the hour of its birth!" His eyes gleamed with almost fanatic ardour. "For this will be forgotten all my errors, and forgiven all my sins!" "I am sure of that," said Zoe earnestly. "But--whatever you came to do----" "I have not done--you would say? Only in part. Where I made my home in London, you have seen a curtained recess. It held the Emblem of my temporal power." He moved his hand, and the sunlight struck green beams from the bezel of the strange ring upon his finger. Zoe glanced at it with something that was almost like fear. "This," he said, replying, as was his uncanny custom to an unspoken question, "is but the sign whereby I may be known for the holder of that other Emblem. My house is empty now; the Emblem returns to the land where it was fashioned." "You are abandoning your projects--your mission? Why?" "Perhaps because the sword is too heavy for the wielder. Perhaps because I am only a man--and lonely." The launch touched the pier, below them. "You are the most loyal friend I have made in England--in Europe--in the world," said Severac Bablon. "Good-bye." Zoe was very pale. "Do you mean--for--always?" "When you have said 'Good-bye' to me I have nothing else to stay for." Zoe glanced at him once and looked away. Her charming face suddenly flushed rosily, and a breeze from the sea curtained the bright eyes with intractable curls. "But if I _won't_ say 'Good-bye'?" she whispered. End of Project Gutenberg's The Sins of Severac Bablon, by Sax Rohmer