cision without comment. The Frenchman knew
him so well, it seemed, that he knew his tastes, or suspected his
indifference. While he thus rattled on he glanced sharply from time to
time at his companion, and when the waiter was finally sent away with a
hundred minute instructions, he turned suddenly to Cartoner.

"You are absorbed. What are you thinking about?" he said.

"I was thinking how well you speak Polish. And yet you have only been
here once before," answered the Englishman, bluntly.

"When I was a young man there were opportunities of learning Polish in
Paris," said Deulin. "Yes--I learned Polish when I was young----"

He had arranged the table to his satisfaction, had picked up several
objects to examine them and replace them with care on the exact spot
from whence he had taken them, and was now looking round the room with
large, deep-lined eyes which were always tired and never at rest.

"When one is young, one learns so much in a short time, especially if
that time is ill-spent," he said, airily. "That is why the virtuous
are such poor company; they have no backbone to their past. With the
others--'nous autres'--it is the evil deeds that form a sort of spinal
column to our lives, rigid and strong, upon which to lean in old age
when virtue is almost a necessity."

Finally he came round in his tour of inspection to the face opposite to
him.

"Do you know," he said, sharply, "you are devilish absent-minded. It is
a bad habit. It makes the world think that you have something on your
mind. And having nothing on its own mind--or no mind to have anything
on--it hates you for your airs of superiority."

He took up the bottle of wine which the waiter had set upon the table in
front of him, inspected the label, and filled two glasses. He tasted the
vintage, and made a wry face. Then he raised his shoulders with an air
or reconciliation to the inevitable.

"When I was a young--a very young diplomatist--an old scoundrel in gold
spectacles told me that one of the first rules of the game was to appear
content with that which you cannot alter. We must apply that rule to
this wine. It is our old friend, Chateau la Pompe. It will not hurt you.
It will not loosen your tongue, my friend, you need not fear that."

He spoke so significantly that Cartoner looked across the table at him.

"What do you mean?"

Deulin laughed and made no answer.

"Do you think that my tongue requires loosening?"

And the Frenchman str