cy and care showed
her that he had guessed something, it also opened up a new side to his
character. For the susceptibilities of men and women who have passed
middle age are usually dull, and often quite dead, to the sensitiveness
of younger hearts. It almost seemed that he divined that Wanda's heart
was sensitive and sore, like an exposed nerve, though she showed the
world a quiet face, such as the Bukatys had always shown through as long
and grim a family history as the world has known.

"Do you not feel lonely in this great room?" he asked, looking round at
the bare walls, which still showed the dim marks left by the portraits
that had gone to grace an imperial gallery.

"No, I think not," answered Wanda. She followed his glance round the
room, wondering, perhaps, if the rest of her life was to be weighed
down by the sense of loneliness which had come over her that day for the
first time.

Deulin, like the majority of Frenchmen, had certain mental gifts,
usually considered to be the special privilege of women. He had a
feminine way of skirting a subject--of walking round, as it were, and
contemplating it from various side issues, as if to find out the best
approach to it.

"The worst of Warsaw," he said, "is its dulness. The theatres are
deplorable. You must admit that. And of society, there is, of course,
none. I have even tried a travelling circus out by the Mokotow. One must
amuse one's self."

He looked at her furtively, as if he were ashamed of having to amuse
himself, and remembered too late how much the confession might mean.

"It was sordid," he continued. "One wondered how the performers could be
content to risk their lives for the benefit of such a small and such
an undistinguished audience. There was a trapeze troupe, however, who
interested me. There was a girl with a stereotyped smile--like cracking
nuts. There was a young man whose conceit took one's breath away. It was
so hard to reconcile such preposterous vanity with the courage that he
must have had. And there was a large, modest man who interested me. It
was really he who did all the work. It was he who caught the others when
they swung across the tent in mid-air. He was very steady and he was
usually the wrong way up, hanging by his heels on a swinging trapeze. He
had the lives of the others in his hands at every moment. But it was the
others who received the applause--the nut-cracker girl who pirouetted,
and the vain man who tapped his che