“C’est l’amour, c’est l’amour,” sang Annalise, swaying.

“Is it well so, Fraeulein?” repeated Fritzing, strangling a furious desire to slap her.

“Did you speak?” inquired Annalise, pausing in her song.

“I am speaking all the time.  I asked if it were well to betray the secrets of your royal mistress.”

“I have been starved,” said Annalise.

“You have had the same fare as ourselves.”

“I have been called names.”

“Have I not expressed—­regret?”

“I have been treated as dirt.”

“Well, well, I have apologized.”

“If you had behaved to me as a maid of a royal lady should be behaved to, I would have faithfully done my part and kept silence.  Now give me my money and I will go.”

“I will give you your money—­certainly, liebes Kind.  It is what I am most desirous of doing.  But only on condition that you stay.  If you go, you go without it.  If you stay, I will do as I said about the cook and will—­” Fritzing paused—­“I will endeavour to refrain from calling you anything hasty.”

“Two hundred marks,” said Annalise gazing at the ceiling, “is nothing.”

“Nothing?” cried Fritzing.  “You know very well that it is, for you, a great sum.”

“It is nothing.  I require a thousand.”

“A thousand?  What, fifty English sovereigns?  Nay, then, but there is no reasoning with you,” cried Fritzing in tones of real despair.

She caught the conviction in them and hesitated.  “Eight hundred, then,” she said.

“Impossible.  And besides it would be a sin.  I will give you twenty.”

“Twenty?  Twenty marks?” Annalise stared at him a moment then resumed her swaying and her song—­“Jedermann macht mir die Cour”—­sang Annalise with redoubled conviction.

“No, no, not marks—­twenty pounds,” said Fritzing, interrupting what was to him a most maddening music.  “Four hundred marks.  As much as many a German girl can only earn by labouring two years you will receive for doing nothing but hold your tongue.”

Annalise closed her lips tightly and shook her head.  “My tongue cannot be held for that,” she said, beginning to sway again and hum.

Adjectives foamed on Fritzing’s own, but he kept them back. “Maedchen,” he said with the gentleness of a pastor in a confirmation class, “do you not remember that the love of money is the root of all evil?  I do not recognize you.  Since when have you become thus greedy for it?”

“Give me eight hundred and I will stop.”

“I will give you six hundred,” said Fritzing, fighting for each of his last precious pounds.

“Eight.”

“Six.”

“I said eight,” said Annalise, stopping and looking at him with lifted eye-brows and exactly imitating the distinctness with which the Princess had just said “I said tea.”

“Six is an enormous sum.  Why, what would you do with it?”