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 tel