"I spoke nothing," he replied still in the smooth accent which was not familiar to her. "A man of business like myself, feels bound, if he has any natural turning that way, to become a physiognomist and thought-reader in order not to pay too dearly for bargains; I am happy to say that I rarely blunder." "Then you can read my disposition?" exclaimed Césarine mockingly. "I knew it before." "Indeed! then you would do me a great service, monsieur, if you would tell me how it strikes you, as an average man. For I assure you," she went on, taking a seat without pointing out one to him, "that some days I do not understand myself, a most humiliating thing, though ancient wisdom acknowledged that the hardest thing is self-knowledge." "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."