“So you see, madame,” he said, “you belong to me.”

She smiled.

“Hand and foot,” he added.  “But I am soft-hearted.”

He shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

“What will you?” he said, looking out of the window.  “I love you.”

“Nonsense!”

He turned slowly round.

“What?”

“Nonsense!” repeated Etta.  “You love power; you are a bully.  You love to please your own vanity by thinking that you have me in your power.  I am not afraid of you.”

De Chauxville leaned gracefully against the window.  He still held his rifle.

“Reflect a little,” he said, with his cold smile.  “It would appear that you do not quite realize the situation.  Women rarely realize situations in time.  Our friend—­your husband—­has many of the English idiosyncrasies.  He has all the narrow-minded notions of honor which obtain in that country.  Added to this, I suspect him of possessing a truly Slavonic fire which he keeps under.  ‘A smouldering fire—­’ You know, madame, our French proverb.  He is not the man to take a rational and broad-minded view of your little transaction with M. Vassili; more especially, perhaps, as it banished his friend Stepan Lanovitch—­the owner of this house, by the way.  His reception of the news I have to tell him would be unpleasant—­for you.”

“What do you want?” interrupted Etta.  “Money?”

“I am not a needy adventurer.”

“And I am not such a fool, M. de Chauxville, as to allow myself to be dragged into a vulgar intrigue, borrowed from a French novel, to satisfy your vanity.”

De Chauxville’s dull eyes suddenly flashed.

“I will trouble you to believe, madame,” he said, in a low, concentrated voice, “that such a thought never entered my head.  A De Chauxville is not a commercial traveller, if you please.  No; it may surprise you, but my feeling for you has more good in it than you would seem capable of inspiring.  God only knows how it is that a bad woman can inspire a good love.”

Etta looked at him in amazement.  She did not always understand De Chauxville.  No matter for surprise, perhaps; for he did not always understand himself.

“Then what do you want?” she asked.

“In the meantime, implicit obedience.”

“What are you going to use me for?”

“I have ends,” replied Claude de Chauxville, who had regained his usual half-mocking composure, “that you will serve.  But they will be your ends as well as mine.  You will profit by them.  I will take very good care that you come to no harm, for you are the ultimate object of all this.  At the end of it all I see only—­you.”

Etta shrugged her shoulders.  It is to be presumed that she was absolutely heartless.  Many women are.  It is when a heartless woman has brains that one hears of her.

“What if I refuse?” asked Etta, keenly aware of the fact that this man was handicapped by his love for her.