, and a drunken old ruffian they
brought with them from Whydah! The fools! to think to frighten _me_,
that had started by laying out a whole ship's crew! And now you come
along; and I hold you all in the hollow of my palm. But I open my
hand--so--and let you go."

"Why?"

"Why? I have told you. I am tired."

"That is not all the truth," answered Miss Belcher, eyeing him
steadily.

"No; it is not all the truth. No one tells all the truth in this
world. But I am glad you challenge me, for you shall have a little
more of the truth. I let you go because you were simpletons, and I
had not dealt with simpletons before."

"Is _that_ the truth?" she persisted.

He laughed and sipped his wine.

"No; I let you go because I saw in you--I who have killed many for
wealth and more for the mere pleasure of power--something which told
me that, after all, I had missed the secret. From an outcast child
in Havana I had made myself the sole king of this treasure of
Mortallone. I went back and made slaves of men and women who had
tossed that child their coppers in contemptuous pity. I brought them
here, to Mortallone, to play with them; and as soon as they tired me,
they--went. It was power I wanted; power I achieved; and in power,
as I thought, lay the secret. The tools in this world say that a
poisoner is always a coward: it is one of the phrases with which
fools cheat themselves. For long I was sure of myself; and then,
when the thought began to haunt me that, after all, I had missed the
secret, I sought out the man who, in Europe, had made himself more
powerful than kings; and I found that _he_ had missed the secret too.
Then I guessed that the secret is beyond a man's power to achieve,
unless it be innate in him; that the gods themselves cannot help a
man born in bastardy, as I was, or born with a vulgar soul, as was
Napoleon. One chance of redemption he has--to mate with a woman who
has, and has known from birth, the secret which he has missed.
I guessed it--I that had wasted my days with singing-women, such as
poor 'Metta! Then I met you, and I knew. Yes, madam, you--you,
whose life to-night I had almost taken with a touch--taught me that I
had left women out of account. Ah, madam, if the world were twenty
years younger! . . . Will you do me the honour to touch glasses and
drink with me?"

"Not on any account," said Miss Belcher, rising. "Not to put too
fine a point upon it, you make me feel thoroughly s