should come to Osterno. A
strange world, mademoiselle--a very strange world, so small, and yet so
large and bare for some of us!"

Maggie looked at him. Then she sat down.

"Tell me," she said, "all that has happened since then."

"I went back," answered Steinmetz, "and we were duly exiled from Russia.
It was sure to come. We were too dangerous. Altogether too quixotic for
an autocracy. For myself I did not mind, but it hurt Paul."

There was a little pause, while the water lapped and whispered at their
feet.

"I heard," said Maggie at length, in a measured voice, "that he had gone
abroad for big game."

"Yes--to India."

"He did not go to America?" enquired Maggie indifferently. She was idly
throwing fragments of wood into the river.

"No," answered Steinmetz, looking straight in front of him. "No, he did
not go to America."

"And you?"

"I--oh, I stayed at home. I have taken a house. It is behind the trees.
You cannot see it. I live at peace with all men and pay my bills every
week. Sometimes Paul comes and stays with me. Sometimes I go and stay
with him in London or in Scotland. I smoke and shoot water-rats, and
watch the younger generation making the same mistakes that we made in
our time. You have heard that my country is in order again? They have
remembered me. For my sins they have made me a count. Bon Dieu! I do not
mind. They may make me a prince, if it pleases them."

He was watching her face beneath his grim old eyebrows.

"These details bore you," he said.

"No."

"When Paul and I are together we talk of a new heaven and a new Russia.
But it will not come in our time. We are only the sowers, and the
harvest is not yet. But I tell Paul that he has not sown wild oats, nor
sour grapes, nor thistles."

He paused, and the expression of his face changed to one of
semi-humorous gravity.

"Mademoiselle," he went on, "it has been my lot to love the prince like
a son. It has been my lot to stand helplessly by while he passed through
many troubles. Perhaps the good God gave him all his troubles at first.
Do you think so?"

Maggie was looking straight in front of her across the quiet river.

"Perhaps so," she said.

Steinmetz also stared in front of him during a little silence. The
common thoughts of two minds may well be drawn together by the
contemplation of a common object. Then he turned toward her.

"It will be a happiness for him to see you," he said quietly.

Maggie ceased breaking s