“Good evening, madame,” he answered.
He closed the door carefully behind him.
XX
An Offer of Friendship
Etta did not move when Steinmetz approached, except, indeed, to push one foot farther out toward the warmth of the wood fire. She certainly was very neatly shod. Steinmetz was one of her few failures. She had never got any nearer to the man. Despite his gray hair and bulky person she argued that he was still a man, and therefore an easy victim to flattery—open to the influence of beauty.
“I wonder why,” she said, looking into the fire, “you hate me.”
Steinmetz looked down at her with his grim smile. The mise-en-scène was perfect, from the thoughtful droop of the head to the innocent display of slipper.
“I wonder why you think that of me,” he replied.
“One cannot help perceiving that which is obvious.”
“While that which is purposely made obvious serves to conceal that which may exist behind it,” replied the stout man.
Etta paused to reflect over this. Was Steinmetz going to make love to her? She was not an inexperienced girl, and knew that there was nothing impossible or even improbable in the thought. She wondered what Karl Steinmetz must have been like when he was a young man. He had a deft way even now of planting a double entendre when he took the trouble. How could she know that his manner was always easiest, his attitude always politest, toward the women whom he despised. In his way this man was a philosopher. He had a theory that an exaggerated politeness is an insult to a woman’s intellect.
“You think I do not care,” said the Princess Howard Alexis.
“You think I do not admire you,” replied Steinmetz imperturbably.
She looked up at him.
“Do you not give me every reason to think so?” she returned, with a toss of the head.
She was one of those women—and there are not a few—who would quarrel with you if you do not admire them.
“Not intentionally, princess. I am, as you know, a German of no very subtle comprehension. My position in your household appears to me to be a little above the servants, although the prince is kind enough to make a friend of me and his friends are so good as to do the same. I do not complain. Far from it. I am well paid. I am interested in my work. I am more or less my own master. I am very fond of Paul. You—are kind and forbearing. I do my best—in a clumsy way, no doubt—to spare you my heavy society. But of course I do not presume to form an opinion upon your—upon you.”
“But I want you to form an opinion,” she said petulantly.
“Then you must know that I could only form one which would be pleasing to you.”
“I know nothing of the sort,” replied Etta. “Of course I know that all that you say about position and work is mere irony. Paul thinks there is no one in the world like you.”
Steinmetz glanced sharply down at her. He had never considered the possibility that she might love Paul. Was this, after all, jealousy? He had attributed it to vanity.
“And I have no doubt he is right,” she went on. Suddenly she gave a little laugh. “Don’t you understand?” she said. “I want to be friends.”
She did not look at him, but sat with pouting lips holding out her hand.
Karl Steinmetz had been up to the elbows, as it were, in the diplomacy of an unscrupulous, grasping age ever since his college days. He had been behind the scenes in more than one European crisis, and that which goes on behind the scenes is not always edifying or conducive to a squeamishness of touch. He was not the man to be mawkishly afraid of soiling his fingers. But the small white hand rather disconcerted him.
He took it, however, in his great, warm, soft grasp, held it for a moment, and relinquished it.
“I don’t want you to address all your conversation to Maggie, and to ignore me. Do you think Maggie so very pretty?”
There was a twist beneath the gray mustache as he answered, “Is that all the friendship you desire? Does it extend no farther than a passing wish to be first in petty rivalries of daily existence? I am afraid, my dear princess, that my friendship is a heavier matter—a clumsier thing than that.”
“A big thing not easily moved,” she suggested, looking up with her dauntless smile.
He shrugged his great shoulders.
“It may be—who knows? I hope it is,” he answered.
“The worst of those big things is that they are sometimes in the way,” said Etta reflectively, without looking at him.
“And yet the life that is only a conglomeration of trifles is a poor life to look back upon.”
“Meaning mine?” she asked.
“Your life has not been trifling,” he said gravely.
She looked up at him, and then for some moments kept silence while she idly opened and shut her fan. There was in the immediate vicinity of Karl Steinmetz a sort of atmosphere of sympathy which had the effect of compelling confidence. Even Etta was affected by it. During the silence recorded she was quelling a sudden desire to say things to this man which she had never said to any. She only succeeded in part.
“Do you ever feel an unaccountable sensation of dread,” she asked, with a weary little laugh; “a sort of foreboding with nothing definite to forebode?”
“Unaccountable—no,” replied Steinmetz. “But then I am a German—and stout, which may make a difference. I have no nerves.”
He looked into the fire through his benevolent gold-rimmed spectacles.
“Is it nerves—or is it Petersburg?” she asked abruptly. “I think it is Petersburg. I hate Petersburg.”
“Why Petersburg more than Moscow or Nizhniy or—Tver?”
She drew in a long, slow breath, looking him up and down the while from the corners of her eyes.
“I do not know,” she replied collectedly; “I think it is damp. These houses are built on reclaimed land,
