"You were good enough," he returned, drawing his lips down savagely,
"to give us a bit of information which we found of value. Very likely
we might have hit upon it somewhere else, but that's no matter, as long
as we did get it through you. We've no inclination to shirk our debt.
Now what's your price?"
Fenton rose from his chair, with an impulsive movement; then he
controlled himself and sat down again. He looked at his visitor with
eyes of fire.
"I am not aware," he returned, "that I have ever been in the market, so
that I have not been obliged to consider that question."
Alfred Irons was silent for a moment. He felt somewhat as if he had
received a dash of ice-water in the face. He wrinkled up his narrow
eyes and studied the man before him. He could not understand what the
other was driving at. He was little likely to be able to follow the
subtile changes of Fenton's imaginative mind, and he could at present
see no explanation of the way in which his advances were met, except
the theory that the artist was fencing to insure a larger reward for
his treachery than might be given him if he accepted the first offer in
silence.
Fenton, on his part, was so filled with rage that it was with
difficulty that he restrained himself. The length to which his intimacy
with Ninitta had now gone, however, made it absolutely necessary that
he should avoid a quarrel in which her name might be brought up; and he
had, moreover, put himself into the hands of Irons, by giving him the
information in regard to the plans for Feltonville.
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