"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 dist