"There is so much to be done," answered Steinmetz, "that it is difficult to know what to do first. We must not forget that De Chauxville is furious. He will do all the harm of which he is capable at once. We must not forget that the country is in a state of smoldering revolt, and that we have two women, two English ladies, entrusted to our care."

Paul moved uneasily in his chair. His companion had struck the right note. This large man was happiest when he was tiring himself out.

"Yes; but about Etta?" he said.

And the sound of his voice made Steinmetz wince. There is nothing so heartrending as the sight of dumb suffering.

"You must see her," answered he reflectively. "You must see her, of course. She may be able to explain."

He looked across the table beneath his shaggy gray eyebrows. Paul did not at that moment look a likely subject for explanations--even the explanations of a beautiful woman. But there was one human quantity which in all his experience Karl Steinmetz had never successfully gauged--namely, the extent of a woman's power over the man who loves, or at one time has loved her.

"She cannot explain away Stepan Lanovitch's ruined life. She can hardly explain away a thousand deaths from unnatural causes every winter, in this province alone."

This was what Steinmetz dreaded--justice.

"Give her the opportunity," he said.

Paul was looking out of the window. His singularly firm mouth was still and quiet--not a mouth for explanations.

"I will, if you like," he said.

"I do like, Paul. I beg of you to do it. And remember that--she is not a man."

This, like other appeals of the same nature, fell on stony ground. Paul simply did not understand it. In all the years of his work among the peasants it is possible that some well-spring of conventional charity had been dried up--scorched in the glare of burning injustice. He was not at this moment in a mood to consider the only excuse that Steinmetz seemed to be able to urge.

The sun had set long ago. The short twilight lay over the snow-covered land with a chill hopelessness. Steinmetz looked at his watch. They had been together an hour--one of those hours that count as years in a life time. He had to peer into the face of the watch in order to see the hands. The room was almost dark, and no servant ever came to it, unless summoned.

Paul was looking down at his companion, as if waiting to hear the time.

At great moments we are suddenly brought face to face with the limits of human nature. It is at such moments that we find that we are not gods, but only men. We can only feel to a certain extent, only suffer up to a certain point.

"We must dress for dinner," said Steinmetz. "Afterward--well, afterward we shall see."

"Yes," answered Paul. And he did not go.

The two men stood looking at each other for a moment. They had passed through much together--danger, excitement, and now they were dabbling in sorrow. It would appear that this same sorrow runs like a river across the road of our life. Some of us find the ford and plash through the shallows--shallow ourselves--while others flounder into deep water.

These are they who look right on to the greater events, and fail to note the trivial details of each little step. Paul was wading through the deep water, and this good friend of his was not inclined to stand upon the bank. It is while passing through this river that Fortune sends some of us a friend, who is ever afterward different from all others.

Paul stood looking down at the broad, heavy face of the man who loved him like a father. It was not easy for him to speak. He seemed to be making an effort.

"I do not want you to think," he said at last, "that it is as bad as it might have been. It might have been worse--much worse--had I not made a mistake in regard to my own feelings when I married her. I will try and do the right thing by her. Only at present there does not seem to be much left, except you."

Steinmetz looked up with his quaintly resigned smile.

"Ah, yes," he said, "I am there always."

CHAPTER XXXIX

HUSBAND AND WIFE

Karl Steinmetz had shown the depth of his knowledge of men and women when he commented on that power of facing danger with an unruffled countenance which he was pleased to attribute to English ladies above all women. During the evening he had full opportunity of verifying his own observations.

Etta came down to dinner smiling and imperturbable. On the threshold of the drawing-room she exchanged a glance with Karl Steinmetz; and that was all. At dinner it was Maggie and Paul who were silent. Etta talked to Steinmetz--brightly, gayly, with a certain courage of a very high order; for she was desperate, and she did not show it.

At last the evening came to an end. Maggie had sung two songs. Steinmetz had performed on the piano with a marvellous touch. All had played their parts with the brazen faces which Steinmetz, in his knowledge of many nations, assigned to the Anglo-Saxon race before others.

At last Etta rose to go to bed, with a little sharp sigh of great suspense. It was coming.

She went up to her room, bidding Maggie good-night in the passage. In a mechanical way she allowed the deft-handed maid to array her in a dressing gown--soft, silken, a dainty triumph in its way. Then, almost impatiently, she sent the maid away when her hair was only half released. She would brush it herself. She was tired. No, she wanted nothing more.

She sat down by the fire, brush in hand. She could hardly breathe. It was coming.

She heard Paul come to his dressing-room. She heard his deep, quiet voice reply to some question of his valet's. Then the word "Good-night"

in the same quiet voice. The valet had gone. There was only the door now between her and--what? Her fingers were at the throat of her dressing-gown. The soft lace seemed to choke her.

Then Paul knocked at the door. It was coming. She opened her lips, but at first could make no sound.

"Come in!" she said at length hoarsely.

She wondered whether he would kill her. She wondered whether she was in love with her husband. She had begun wondering that lately; she was wondering it when he came in. He had changed his dress-coat for a silk-faced jacket, in which he was in the habit of working with Steinmetz in the quiet room after the household had gone to bed.

She looked up. She dropped the brush, and ran toward him with a great rustle of her flowing silks.

"Oh, Paul, what is it?" she cried.

She stopped short, not daring to touch him, before his cold, set face.

"Have you seen any one?" she whispered.

"Only De Chauxville," he answered, "this afternoon."

"Indeed, Paul," she protested hastily, "it was nothing. A message from Catrina Lanovitch. It was only the usual visit of an acquaintance. It would have been very strange if he had not called. Do you think I could care for a man like that?"

"I never did think so until now," returned Paul steadily. "Your excuses accuse you. You may care for him. I do not know; I--do--not--care."

She turned slowly and went back to her chair.

Mechanically she took up the brush, and shook back her beautiful hair.

"You mean you do not care for me," she said. "Oh, Paul! be careful."

Paul stood looking at her. He was not a subtle-minded man at all. He was not one of those who take it upon themselves to say that they understand women--using the word in an offensively general sense, as if women were situated midway between the human and the animal races. He was old-fashioned enough to look upon women as higher and purer than men, while equally capable of thought and self-control. He had, it must be remembered, no great taste for fictional literature. He had not read the voluminous lucubrations of the modern woman writer. He had not assisted at the nauseating spectacle of a woman morally turning herself inside out in three volumes and an interview.

No, this man respected women still; and he paid them an honor which, thank Heaven, most of them still deserve. He treated them as men in the sense that he considered them to be under the same code of right and wrong, of good and evil.

He did not understand what Etta meant when she told him to be careful.