oken man. I never met it until this evening."

Etta excused him readily enough. She could forgive plenty of
plain-speaking of this description. Had she not been inordinately vain,
this woman, like many, would have been extraordinarily clever. She
laughed, with little sidelong glances.

"I only hope that you will honor Paris on your way home to England,"
went on Vassili, who had a wonderful knack of judging men and women,
especially shallow ones. "Now, when may that be? When may we hope to see
you again? How long will you be in Russia, and--"

"Ce Vassili is the best English scholar I know!" broke in Steinmetz, who
had approached somewhat quietly. "But he will not talk, princess--he is
so shy."

Paul was approaching also. It was eleven o'clock, he said, and
travellers who had to make an early start would do well to get home to
bed.

When the tall doors had been closed behind the departing guests, Vassili
walked slowly to the fire-place. He posted himself on the bear-skin
hearthrug, his perfectly shod feet well apart--a fine dignified figure
of a man, of erect and military carriage; a very mask of a
face--soulless, colorless, emotionless ever.

He stood biting at his thumb-nail, looking at the door through which
Etta Alexis had just passed in all the glory of her beauty, wealth, and
position.

"The woman," he said slowly, "who sold me the Charity League papers--and
she thinks I do not recognize her!"

CHAPTER XIX

ON THE NEVA

Karl Steinmetz had apparently been transacting business on the Vassili
Ostrov, which the travelled reader doubtless knows as the northern bank
of the Neva, a part of Petersburg--an island, as the name tells us,
where business is transacted; where steamers land their cargoes and
riverside loafers impede the traffic.

What the business of Karl Steinmetz may have been is not of moment or
interest; moreover, it was essentially the affair of a man capable of
holding his own and his tongue against the world.

He was recrossing the river, not by the bridge, which requires a doffed
hat by reason of its shrine, but by one of the numerous roads cut across
the ice from bank to bank. He duly reached the southern shore, ascending
to the Admiralty Gardens by a flight of sanded steps. Here he lighted a
cigar, and, tucking his hands deep into the pockets of his fur coat, he
proceeded to walk slowly through the bare and deserted public garden.

A girl had crossed the river in front of him at