Speech is where hidden intentions escape. Not through deliberate disclosure, but through the unguarded word, the over-explanation, the moment when the mouth moves faster than the strategy. That is the pressure point Greene turns to in Law 4. Over-explanation, in Greene's account, is not just inefficient — it is a signal. When someone elaborates at length, justifies a decision no one questioned, or rushes to fill a silence, Greene argues they are broadcasting something: a need for approval, a search for permission, an anxiety about how they are being read. The words themselves may be harmless. But the impulse behind them is legible. And legibility, in Greene's framework, is a form of vulnerability. The principle Greene draws from this is stark. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less than necessary. The more you speak, he contends, the more ordinary you appear — and the more likely you are to say something that gives an opponent material to work with. Words are currency. The more you spend, the less each one is worth. For example, Louis XIV made this into a governing technique. When courtiers came to him with elaborate petitions — carefully constructed arguments, flattery, appeals to his generosity — the king would often respond with a single phrase: "I shall see." Not yes. Not no. Not an explanation. Just that. And the courtier would leave the room with nothing to hold onto, no way to plan, no way to push back. The ambiguity was the point. Louis had not revealed his thinking, his preference, or his timeline. He had given the petitioner a phrase to interpret, and interpretation is a form of waiting. The courtier was now doing the work. The king had moved on. Greene calls this the Sphinx-like mode of communication. Rare speech. Careful ambiguity. The ability to make others fill the silence with their own projections and anxieties. The power dynamic inverts: instead of you revealing yourself, others reveal themselves to you. They talk to fill the gap. They offer concessions to break the discomfort. They explain themselves more than they intended, because the silence felt like a demand. Greene's behavioral advice here narrows to one thing: the pause. Before speaking, stop. Let the silence exist for a moment longer than feels comfortable. That pause is not emptiness — it is pressure, transferred. The person waiting for your answer feels it. You do not. Now, the mechanism behind this is not mystery for its own sake. Greene is not arguing for coldness or deliberate cruelty. The argument is structural. The person who controls how much they reveal controls the terms of the interaction. Every word you add is a data point. Every data point narrows the range of what others have to imagine about you. And imagination, Greene suggests, is often more powerful than information. A courtier who knows exactly what Louis XIV thinks has a fixed target to work with. A courtier who only has "I shall see" has to keep guessing — and guessing keeps them deferential. What the courtiers of Versailles could not know, standing outside that closed expression, was what the silence was costing them. Days of uncertainty. Weeks of positioning. The king's economy of speech was their expenditure of energy. That asymmetry — his stillness, their motion — is what Greene is pointing at. And the question the episode has not yet answered is what happens when that restraint fails. When the person with the power and the talent cannot hold the center. When the words come out anyway.