ut in Deulin, quickly, at the sight of her face.
"Nothing that need disturb your thoughts or mine. It is only a question
of empires and kingdoms."

With his light laugh, he turned away from her, and was gone before she
could ask him a question.

In half an hour he returned. He had a cab waiting at the door, and the
passport difficulty had been overcome, he said.

"The man in the street," he added, turning to the prince, sitting beside
Wanda, who stood before the study fire in her furs, ready to go--"the
man in the street and the innumerable persons who carry swords in this
city know nothing."

"They will know at the frontier," answered the prince, "and it is there
that you will have difficulties."

"Then it is there that we shall overcome them," he replied, gayly. "It
is there also, I hope, that we shall dine. For I have had no lunch. No
matter; I lunched yesterday. I shall eat things in the train, and Wanda
will hate me. I always hate other people's crumbs, while for my own I
have a certain tenderness. Yes. Now let us say good-bye and be gone."

For Paul Deulin's gayety always rose to the emergency of the moment.
He came of a stock that had made jests on the guillotine steps. He was
suddenly pressed for time, and had scarcely a moment in which to bid
his old friend good-bye, and no leisure to make those farewell speeches
which are nearly always better left unsaid.

"I must ask you," he said to Wanda, when they were in the cab, "to drive
round by the Europe, and keep you waiting a few moments while I run
up-stairs and put together my belongings. I shall give up my room. I may
not come back. One never knows."

And he looked curiously out of the cab window into the street that had
run with blood twice within his own recollection. He peered into the
faces of the passers-by as into the faces of men who were to-day, and
to-morrow would be as the seed of grass.

In the Cracow Faubourg all seemed to be as usual. Some were going about
their business without haste or enthusiasm, as the conquered races
always seem to do, while others appeared to have no business at all
beyond a passing interest in the shop-windows and a leisurely sense of
enjoyment in the sunshine. The quieter thoroughfares were quieter than
usual, Deulin thought. But he made no comment, and Wanda seemed to be
fully occupied with her own thoughts. The long expected, when it comes
at last, is really more surprising than the unexpected itself.

It was t