“Only what, Marston?” she murmured.

“Only I know when the game is beyond me.”

“So, to you, I’m a game?”

“Of an impossible sort,” he replied.  “I admire at a distance—­and keep my head.”

“And your heart, too, mon ami?”

“My heart is the servant of my head.  When it ceases so to be, I shall ask to be detached from the Paris station.”

“Are you satisfied with your present assignment?”

“Much more than satisfied; very much more than satisfied.”

She held out her hand to him, and smiled ravishingly.

“We understand each other now, Marston,” she said simply; which tied Marston only the tighter to her—­as she well knew.  And Marston knew it, too.  Also he knew that he had not the shade of a chance with her—­and that she knew that he knew it.  It was Madeline Spencer’s experience with men that such as she tried for she usually got.  There were exceptions, but them she could count on the fingers of one hand.  Harleston—­though for a time he was on the verge of submission—­was an exception.  And for that she was ready to rend him at the fitting opportunity; the more so because her own feelings had been aroused.  As they were once before with Armand Dalberg—­who had calmly put her in her place, and tumbled her schemes about her ears.

All her life there would be a weak spot in her heart for Dalberg; and, such is the peculiarly inconsistent nature of the female, a hatred that fed itself on his scorn of her.

She had dared much with Dalberg—­and often; and always she had lost.  The Duke of Lotzen was only a means to an end:  money and exquisite ease.  Left with ample wealth on his decease, she, for her excitement and to be in affairs, had mixed in diplomacy, and had quickly become an expert in tortuous moves of the tortuous game.

Then one day she encountered Harleston, and bested him.  With a rare good nature for a diplomat, he had taken his defeat with a smile, at the same time observing her manifold attractions with a careful eye and an indulgent mind for the past.  Which caused her to look at him again, and to think of him frequently; and at last to want him for her own—­after a little while.  And he had appeared not averse to the wanting—­after a little while.  Now, just as he was about to succumb, he was suddenly whisked away by another woman—­that woman simply a later edition of herself:  the same figure, the same poise, the same methods, the same allurements; but younger in years, fresher, and, she admitted it to herself, less acquainted with the ways of men.  And now she had lost him; and never would she be able to get him back.  Another woman had filched him from her—­filched him forever from her, she knew.

Therefore she hated Mrs. Clephane with a glowing hate.

“Have you seen the—­man?” Marston asked, when her attention came back to him.

She nodded.  “I’ve had a communication from him.”