It is not with a view to profit that I have carefully avoided giving any clue whatever to my secret.

Tour munificence would render it most ungrateful and unjust in me to haggle over the price of any service I could render you; and I should be greedy indeed if I desired greater wealth than you have bestowed.

If I may say so without offending, I earnestly wish that you would permit me, by resigning your gifts, to retain in my own eyes the right to keep my secret without seeming undutiful or unthankful." "I have said," he replied, "that on that point you misconceive our respective positions.

No one supposes that you are indebted to us for anything more than it was the duty of the Sovereign to give, as a mark of the universal admiration and respect, to our guest from another world; still less could any imagine that on such a trifle could be founded any claim to a secret so invaluable.

You will offend me much and only if you ever again speak of yourself as bound by personal obligation to me or mine.