"I am only asking a proof that you care for me."

Etta gave a little laugh--a nervous laugh with no mirth in it.

"A proof! But that is so bourgeois and unnecessary. Haven't you proof enough, since I am your wife?"

Paul looked at her without any sign of yielding. His attitude, his whole being, was expressive of that immovability of purpose which had hitherto been concealed from her by his quiet manner. Steinmetz knew of the mental barrier within this Anglo-Russian soul, against which prayer and argument were alike unavailing. The German had run against it once or twice in the course of their joint labors, and had invariably given way at once.

Etta looked at him. The color was coming back to her face in patches.

There was something unsteady in her eyes--something suggesting that for the first time in her life she was daunted by a man. It was not Paul's speech, but his silence that alarmed her. She felt that trivial arguments, small feminine reasons, were without weight.

"Now that you are married," she said, "I do not think you have any right to risk your life and your position for a fad."

"I have done it with impunity for the last two or three years," he answered. "With ordinary precautions the risk is small. I have begun the thing now; I must go on with it."

"But the country is not safe for us--for you."

"Oh, yes, it is," answered Paul. "As safe as ever it has been."

Etta paused. She turned round and looked into the fire. He could not see her face.

"Then the Ch--Charity League is forgotten?" she said.

"No," answered her husband quietly. "It will not be forgotten until we have found out who sold us to the Government."

Etta's lips moved in a singular way. She drew them in and held them with her teeth. For a moment her beautiful face wore a hunted expression of fear.

"What will you gain by that?" she asked evenly.

"I? Oh, nothing. I do not care one way or the other. But there are some people who want the man--very much."

Etta drew in a long, deep breath.

"I will go to Osterno with you, if you like," she said. "Only--only I must have Maggie with me."

"Yes, if you like," answered Paul, in some surprise.

The clock struck ten, and Etta's eyes recovered their brightness.

Womanlike, she lived for the present. The responsibility of the future is essentially a man's affair. The present contained a ball, and it was only in the future that Osterno and Russia had to be faced. Let us also give Etta Alexis her due. She was almost fearless. It is permissible to the bravest to be startled. She was now quite collected. The even, delicate color had returned to her face.

"Maggie is such a splendid companion," she said lightly. "She is so easy to please. I think she would come if you asked her, Paul."

"If you want her, I shall ask her, of course; but it may hinder us a little. I thought you might be able to help us--with the women, you know."

There was a queer little smile on Etta's face--a smile, one might have thought, of contempt.

"Yes, of course," she said. "It is so nice to be able to do good with one's money."

Paul looked at her in his slow, grave way, but he said nothing. He knew that his wife was cleverer and brighter than himself. He was simple enough to think that this superiority of intellect might be devoted to the good of the peasants of Osterno.

"It is not a bad place," he said--"a very fine castle, one of the finest in Europe. Before I came away I gave orders for your rooms to be done up. I should like every thing to be nice for you."

"I know you would, dear," she answered, glancing at the clock. (The carriage was ordered for a quarter-past ten.) "But I suppose," she went on, "that, socially speaking, we shall be rather isolated. Our neighbors are few and far between."

"The nearest," said Paul quietly, "are the Lanovitches."

"_Who_?"

"The Lanovitches. Do you know them?"

"Of course not," answered Etta sharply. "But I seem to know the name.

Were there any in St. Petersburg?"

"The same people," answered Paul; "Count Stepan Lanovitch."

Etta was looking at her husband with her bright smile. It was a little too bright, perhaps. Her eyes had a gleam in them. She was conscious of being beautifully dressed, conscious of her own matchless beauty, almost dauntless, like a very strong man armed.

"Well, I think I am a model wife," she said: "to give in meekly to your tyranny; to go and bury myself in the heart of Russia in the middle of winter--By the way, we must buy some furs; that will be rather exciting.

But you must not expect me to be very intimate with your Russian friends. I am not quite sure that I like Russians"--she went toward him, laying her two hands gently on his broad breast and looking up at him--"not quite sure--especially Russian princes who bully their wives.

You may kiss me, however, but be very careful. Now I must go and finish dressing. We shall be late as it is."

She gathered together her fan and gloves, for she had petulantly dragged off a pair which did not fit.

"And you will ask Maggie to come with us?" she said.

He held open the door for her to pass out, gravely polite even to his wife--this old-fashioned man.

"Yes," he answered; "but why do you want me to ask her?"

"Because I want her to come."

CHAPTER XVII

CHARITY

In these democratic days a very democratic theory has exploded. Not so very long ago we believed, or made semblance of belief, that it is useless to put a high price upon a ticket with the object of securing that selectness for which the high-born crave. "If they want to come,"

Lady Champignon (wife of Alderman Champignon) would say, "they do not mind paying the extra half-guinea."

But Lady Champignon was wrong. It is not that the self-made man cannot or will not pay two guineas for a ball-ticket. It is merely that, in his commercial way, he thinks that he will not have his money's worth, and therefore prefers keeping his two guineas to spend on something more tangible--say food. The nouveau riche never quite purges his mind of the instinct commercial, and it therefore goes against the grain to pay heavily for a form of entertainment which his soul had not the opportunity of learning to love in its youth. The aristocrat, on the other hand, has usually been brought up to the cultivation of enjoyment, and he therefore spends with perfect equanimity more on his pleasure than the bourgeois mind can countenance.

The ball to which Paul and Etta were going was managed by some titled ladies who knew their business well. The price of the tickets was fabulous. The lady patronesses of the great Charity Ball were tactful and unabashed. They drew the necessary line (never more necessary than it is to-day) with a firm hand.

The success of the ball was therefore a foregone conclusion. In French fiction there is invariably a murmur of applause when the heroine enters a room full of people, which fact serves, at all events, to show the breeding and social status of persons with whom French novelists are in the habit of associating. There was therefore no applause when Paul and Etta made their appearance, but that lady had, nevertheless, the satisfaction of perceiving glances, not only of admiration, but of interest and even of disapproval, among her own sex. Her dress she knew to be perfect, and when she perceived the craning pale face of the inevitable lady-journalist, peering between the balusters of a gallery, she thoughtfully took up a prominent position immediately beneath that gallery, and slowly turned round like a beautifully garnished joint before the fire of cheap publicity.

To Paul this ball was much like others. There were a number of the friends of his youth--tall, clean-featured, clean-limbed men, with a tendency toward length and spareness--who greeted him almost affectionately. Some of them introduced him to their wives and sisters, which ladies duly set him down as nice but dull--a form of faint praise which failed to damn. There were a number of ladies to whom it was necessary for him to bow in acknowledgment of past favors which had missed their mark. From the gallery the washed-out female journalists poked out their eager faces--for they were women still, and liked to look upon a man when he was strong.