"In her drawing-room, Excellency."

"Then go and ask her if she will give me a cup of tea in a few minutes."

And the man, a timorous German, went.

A few minutes later Steinmetz, presenting himself at the door of the little drawing-room attached to Etta's suite of rooms, found the princess in a matchless tea-gown waiting beside a table laden with silver tea appliances. A dainty samovar, a tiny tea-pot, a spirit-lamp and the rest, all in the wonderful silver-work of the Slavonski Bazaar in Moscow.

"You see," she said with a smile, for she always smiled on men, "I have obeyed your orders."

Steinmetz bowed gravely. He was one of the few men who could see that smile and be strong. He closed the door carefully behind him. No mention was made of the fact that his message had implied, and she had understood, that he wished to see her alone. Etta was rather pale. There was an anxious look in her eyes--behind the smile, as it were. She was afraid of this man. She looked at the flame of the samovar, busying herself among the tea-things with pretty curving fingers and rustling sleeves. But the tea was never made.

"I begin to think," said Steinmetz, coming to the point in his bluff way, "that you are a sort of beautiful Jonah, a graceful stormy petrel, a fair Wandering Jewess. There is always trouble where you go."

She glanced at his broad face, and read nothing there.

"Go on," she said. "What have I been doing now? How you do hate me, Herr Steinmetz!"

"Perhaps it is safer than loving you," he answered, with his grim humor.

"I suppose," she said, with a quaint little air of resignation which was very disarming, "that you have come here to scold me--you do not want any tea?"

"No; I do not want any tea."

She turned the wick of the spirit-lamp, and the peaceful music of the samovar was still. In her clever eyes there was a little air of sidelong indecision. She could not make up her mind how to take him. Her chiefest method was so old as to be biblical. Yet she could not take him with her eyelids. She had tried.

"You are horribly grave," she said.

"The situation," he replied, "is horribly grave."

Etta looked up at him as he stood before her, and the lamp-light, falling on the perfect oval of her face, showed it to be white and drawn.

"Princess," said the man, "there are in the lives of some of us times when we cease to be men and women, and become mere human beings. There are times, I mean, when the thousand influences of sex die at one blow of fate. This is such a time. We must forget that you are a beautiful woman; I verily believe that there is none more beautiful in the world.

I once knew one whom I admired more, but that was not because she was more beautiful. That, however, is my own story, and this"--he paused and looked round the little room, furnished, decorated for her comfort--"this is your story. We must forget that I am a man, and therefore subject to the influence of your beauty."

She sat looking up into his strong, grave face, and during all that followed she never moved.

"I know you," he said, "to be courageous, and must ask you to believe that I exaggerate nothing in what I am about to tell you. I tell it to you instead of leaving Paul to do so because I know his complete fearlessness, and his blind faith in a people who are unworthy of it. He does not realize the gravity of the situation. They are his own people.

A sailor never believes that his own ship is unseaworthy."

"Go on!" said Etta, for he had paused.

"This country," he continued, "is unsettled. The people of the estate are on the brink of a revolt. You know what the Russian peasant is. It will be no Parisian emeute, half noise, half laughter. We cannot hope to hold this old place against them. We cannot get away from it. We cannot send for help because we have no one to send. Princess, this is no time for half-confidences. I know--for I know these people better even than Paul knows them--I am convinced that this is not the outcome of their own brains. They are being urged on by some one. There is some one at their backs. This is no revolt of the peasants, organized by the peasants. Princess, you must tell me all you know!"

"I--I," she stammered, "I know nothing!"

And then suddenly she burst into tears, and buried her face in a tiny, useless handkerchief. It was so unlike her and so sudden that Steinmetz was startled.

He laid his great hand soothingly on her shoulder.

"I know," he said quietly, "I know more than you think. I am no saint, princess, myself. I too have had my difficulties. I have had my temptations, and I have not always resisted. God knows it is difficult for men to do always the right thing. It is a thousand times more difficult for women. When we spoke together in Petersburg, and I offered you my poor friendship, I was not acting in the dark. I knew as much then as I do now. Princess, I knew about the Charity League papers. I knew more than any except Stepan Lanovitch, and it was he who told me."

He was stroking her shoulder with the soothing movements that one uses toward a child in distress. His great hand, broad and thick, had a certain sense of quiet comfort and strength in it. Etta ceased sobbing, and sat with bowed head, looking through her tears into the gay wood fire. It is probable that she failed to realize the great charity of the man who was speaking to her. For the capacity for evil merges at some point or other into incapability for comprehending good.

"Is that all he knows?" she was wondering.

The suggestion that Sydney Bamborough was not dead had risen up to eclipse all other fear in her mind. In some part her thought reached him.

"I know so much," he said, "that it is safest to tell me more. I offered you my friendship because I think that no woman could carry through your difficulties unaided. Princess, the admiration of Claude de Chauxville may be pleasant, but I venture to think that my friendship is essential."

Etta raised her head a little. She was within an ace of handing over to Karl Steinmetz the rod of power held over her by the Frenchman. There was something in Steinmetz that appealed to her and softened her, something that reached a tender part of her heart through the coating of vanity, through the hardness of worldly experience.

"I have known De Chauxville twenty-five years," he went on, and Etta deferred her confession. "We have never been good friends, I admit. I am no saint, princess, but De Chauxville is a villain. Some day you may discover, when it is too late, that it would have been for Paul's happiness, for your happiness, for every one's good to have nothing more to do with Claude de Chauxville, I want to save you that discovery. Will you act upon my advice? Will you make a stand now? Will you come to me and tell me all that De Chauxville knows about you that he could ever use against you? Will you give yourself into my hands--give me your battle to fight? You cannot do it alone. Only believe in my friendship, princess. That is all I ask."

Etta shook her head.

"I think not," she answered, in a voice too light, too superficial, too hopelessly shallow for the depth of the moment. She was thinking only of Sydney Bamborough, and of that dread secret. She fought with what arms she wielded best--the lightest, the quickest, the most baffling.

"As you will," said Steinmetz.

CHAPTER XXXV

ON THE EDGE OF THE STORM

A Russian village kabak, with a smoking lamp, of which the chimney is broken. The greasy curtains drawn across the small windows exclude the faintest possibility of a draught. The moujik does not like a draught; in fact, he hates the fresh air of heaven. Air that has been breathed three or four times over is the air for him; it is warmer. The atmosphere of this particular inn is not unlike that of every other inn in the White Empire, inasmuch as it is heavily seasoned with the scent of cabbage soup. The odor of this nourishing compound is only exceeded in unpleasantness by the taste of the same. Added to this warm smell there is the smoke of a score of the very cheapest cigarettes. The Russian peasant smokes his cigarette now. It is the first step, and it does not cost him much. It is the dawn of progress--the thin end of the wedge which will broaden out into anarchy. The poor man who smokes a cigarette is sure to pass on to socialistic opinions and troubles in the market-place. Witness the cigarette-smoking countries. Moreover, this same poor man is not a pleasant companion. He smokes a poor cigarette.

There is also the smell of vodka, which bottled curse is standing in tumblers all down the long table. The news has spread in Osterno that vodka is to be had for the asking at the kabak, where there is a meeting. Needless to say, the meeting is a large one. Foolishness and thirst are often found in the same head--a cranium which, by the way, is exceptionally liable to be turned by knowledge or drink.

If the drink at the kabak of Osterno was dangerous, the knowledge was no less so.

"I tell you, little fathers," an orator was shouting, "that the day of the capitalist has gone. The rich men--the princes, the nobles, the great merchants, the monopolists, the tchinovniks--tremble. They know that the poor man is awakening at last from his long lethargy. What have we done in Germany? What have we done in America? What have we done in England and France?"

Whereupon he banged an unwashed fist upon the table with such emphasis that more than one of the audience clutched his glass of vodka in alarm, lest a drop of the precious liquor should be wasted.

No one seemed to know what had been done in Germany, in America, in England, or in France. The people's orator is a man of many questions and much fist-banging. The moujiks of Osterno gazed at him beneath their shaggy brows. Half of them did not understand him. They were as yet uneducated to a comprehension of the street orator's periods. A few of the more intelligent waited for him to answer his own questions, which he failed to do. A vague and ominous question carries as much weight with some people as a statement, and has the signal advantage of being less incriminating.

The speaker--a neckless, broad-shouldered ruffian of the type known in England as "unemployed"--looked round with triumphant head well thrown back. From his attitude it was obvious that he had been the salvation of the countries named, and had now come to Russia to do the same for her.

He spoke with the throaty accent of the Pole. It was quite evident that his speech was a written one--probably a printed harangue issued to him and his compeers for circulation throughout the country. He delivered many of the longer words with a certain unctuous roll of the tongue, and an emphasis indicating the fact that he did not know their meaning.

"From afar," he went on, "we have long been watching you. We have noted your difficulties and your hardships, your sickness, your starvation.

'These men of Tver,' we have said, 'are brave and true and steadfast. We will tell them of liberty.' So I have come to you, and I am glad to see you. Alexander Alexandrovitch, pass the bottle down the table. You see, little fathers, I have not come begging for your money. No; keep your kopecks in your pocket. We do not want your money. We are no tchinovniks. We prove it by giving you vodka to keep your throats wet and your ears open. Fill up your glasses--fill up your glasses!"

The little fathers of Osterno understood this part of the harangue perfectly, and acted upon it.

The orator scratched his head reflectively. There was a certain business-like mouthing of his periods, showing that he had learnt all this by heart. He did not press all his points home in the manner of one speaking from his own brain.