"We are engaged to be married," he observed pointedly.

Steinmetz took his pipe from his lips slowly and imperturbably. He was a man to whom it was no satisfaction to impart news. He either knew it before or did not take much interest in the matter.

"That makes it worse," he said. "A woman only conceals what is bad about her husband. If she knows anything that is likely to make other women think that their husbands are inferior, she will tell it."

Paul laughed.

"But this is not good," he argued. "We have kept it so confoundedly quiet that I am beginning to feel as if it is a crime."

Steinmetz uncrossed his legs, crossed them again, and then spoke after mature reflection:

"As I understand the law of libel, a man is punished, not for telling a lie, but for telling either the truth or a lie with malicious intent. I imagine the Almighty will take the intent into consideration, if human justice finds it expedient to do so!"

Paul shrugged his shoulders. Argument was not his strong point, and, like most men who cannot argue, he was almost impervious to the arguments of others. He recognized the necessity for secrecy--the absolute need of a thousand little secretive precautions and disguises which were intensely disagreeable to him. But he also grumbled at them freely, and whenever he made such objection Karl Steinmetz grew uneasy, as if the question which he disposed of with facile philosophy or humorous resignation had behind it a possibility and an importance of which he was fully aware. It was on these rare occasions that he might have conveyed to a keen observer the impression that he was playing a very dangerous game with a smiling countenance.

"All that we do," pursued Steinmetz, "is to bow to a lamentable necessity for deceit. I have bowed to it all my life. It has been my trade, perhaps. It is not our fault that we are placed in charge of four or five thousand human beings who are no more capable of helping themselves than are sheep. It is not our fault that the forefathers of these sheep cut down the forests and omitted to plant more, so that the flocks with whom we have to deal have no fuel. It is not our fault that a most terrific winter annually renders the land unproductive for four months. It is not our fault that the government to which we are forced to bow--the Czar whose name lifts our hats from our heads--it is not our fault that progress and education are taboo, and that all who endeavor to forward the cause of humanity are promptly put away in a safe place where they are at liberty to forward their own salvation and nothing else. Nothing is our fault, mein lieber, in this country. We have to make the best of adverse circumstances. We are not breaking any human law, and in doing nothing we should be breaking a divine command."

Paul flicked the ash off his cigar. He had heard all this before. Karl Steinmetz's words were usually more remarkable for solid thoughtfulness than for brilliancy of conception or any great novelty of expression.

"Oh!" said Paul quietly, "I am not going to leave off. You need not fear that. Only I shall have to tell my wife. Surely a woman could help us in a thousand ways. There is such a lot that only a woman understands."

"Yes!" grunted Steinmetz; "and only the right sort of woman."

Paul looked up sharply.

"You must leave that to me," he said.

"My very dear friend, I leave every thing to you."

Paul smiled.

There was no positive proof that this was not strictly true. There was no saying that Karl Steinmetz did not leave every thing to every-body.

But wise people thought differently.

"You don't know Etta," he said, half shyly. "She is full of sympathy and pity for these people."

Steinmetz bowed gravely.

"I have no doubt of it."

"And yet you say that she must not be told."

"Certainly not. A secret is considerably strained if it be divided between two people. Stretching it to three will probably break it. You can tell her when you are married. Does she consent to live in Osterno?"

"Oh, yes. I think so."

"Um--m!"

"What did you say?"

"Um--m," repeated Steinmetz, and the conversation somewhat naturally showed signs of collapse.

At this moment the door was opened, and a servant in bright livery, with powdered wig, silk stockings, and a countenance which might have been of wood, brought in a letter on a silver tray.

Paul took the square envelope and turned it over, displaying as he did so a coronet in black and gold on the corner, like a stamp.

Karl Steinmetz saw the coronet. He never took his quiet, unobtrusive glance from Paul's face while he opened the letter and read it.

"A fresh difficulty," said Paul, throwing the note across to his companion.

Steinmetz looked grave while he unfolded the thick stationery.

"Dear Paul [the letter ran]: I hear you are at Osterno and that the Moscow doctor is in your country. We are in great distress at Thors--cholera, I fear. The fame of your doctor has spread to my people, and they are clamoring for him. Can you bring or send him over? You know your room here is always in readiness. Come soon with the great doctor, and also Herr Steinmetz. In doing so you will give more than pleasure to your old friend,"

Catrina Lanovitch.

"P.S. Mother is afraid to go out of doors for fear of infection. She thinks she has a little cold."

Steinmetz folded the letter very carefully, pressing the seam of it reflectively with his stout forefinger and thumb.

"I always think of the lie first," he said. "It's my nature or my misfortune. We can easily write and say that the Moscow doctor has left."

He paused, scratching his brow pensively with his curved forefinger. It is to be feared that he was seeking not so much the truth as the most convenient perversion of the same.

"But then," he went on, "by doing that we leave these poor devils to die in their--styes. Catrina cannot manage them. They are worse than our people."

"Whatever is the best lie to tell," burst in Paul--"as we seem to live in an atmosphere of them--I must go to Thors; that is quite certain."

"There is no must in the case," put in Steinmetz quietly, as a parenthesis. "No man is compelled to throw himself in the way of infection. But I know you will go, whatever I say."

"I suppose I shall," admitted Paul.

"And Catrina will find you out at once."

"Why?"

Steinmetz drew in his feet. He leant forward and knocked his pipe on one of the logs that lay ready to light in the great open fire-place.

"Because she loves you," he said shortly. "There is no coming the Moscow doctor over her, mien lieber."

Paul laughed rather awkwardly. He was one of the few men--daily growing fewer--who hold that a woman's love is not a thing to be tossed lightly about in conversation.

"Then--" he began, speaking rather quickly, as if afraid that Steinmetz was going to say more. "If," he amended, "you think she will find out, she must not see me, that is all."

Steinmetz reflected again. He was unusually grave over this matter. One would scarcely have taken this stout German for a person of any sentiment whatever. Nevertheless he would have liked Paul to marry Catrina Lanovitch in preference to Etta Sydney Bamborough, merely because he thought that the former loved him, while he felt sure that the latter did not. So much for the sentimental point of view--a starting-point, by the way, which usually makes all the difference in a man's life. For a man needs to be loved as much as a woman needs it.

From the practical point of view, Karl Steinmetz knew too much about Etta to place entire reliance on the goodness of her motives. He keenly suspected that she was marrying Paul for his money--for the position he could give her in the world.

"We must be careful," he said. "We must place clearly before ourselves the risks that we are running before we come to any decision. For you the risk is simply that of unofficial banishment. They can hardly send you to Siberia because you are half an Englishman; and that impertinent country has a habit of getting up and shouting when her sons are interfered with. But they can easily make Russia impossible for you.

They can do you more harm than you think. They can do these poor devils of peasants of yours more harm than we can comfortably contemplate. As for me," he paused and shrugged his great shoulders, "it means Siberia.