“Ought I to be here?” she asked. “Going about the streets alone, I mean?”
“You are not alone,” answered Martin, with a laugh.
“No, but—perhaps I ought to be.”
And Martin, looking down, saw nothing but the top of the pink parasol.
“In America, you know,” said the voice from under the parasol, “girls are allowed to do so much more than in Europe. And it is always best to be careful, is it not?—to follow the customs of the country, I mean. In France and Germany people are so particular. I wanted to ask you what is the custom in Warsaw.”
Martin stepped to one side in order to avoid the parasol.
“In Warsaw you can do as you like. We are not French, and Heaven forbid that we should resemble the Germans in anything. Here everyone goes about the streets as they do in England or America.”
As if to confirm this, he walked on slowly, and she walked by his side.
“I can show you the best shops,” he said, “such as they are. This is Ulrich’s, the flower shop. Those violets are Russian. The only good thing I ever heard of that came from Russia. Do you like violets?”
“I love them,” answered Netty, and she walked on rather hurriedly to the next shop.
“You would naturally.”
“Why?” asked Netty, looking with a curious interest at the packets of tea in the Russian shop next to Ulrich’s.
“Is it not the correct thing to select the flower that matches the eyes?”
“It is very kind of you to say that,” said Netty, in a voice half-afraid, half-reproachful.
“It is very kind of Heaven to give you such eyes,” answered Martin, gayly. He was more and more surprised to find how easy it was to get on with Netty, whom he seemed to have known all his life. Like many lively persons, he rather liked a companion to possess a vein of gravity, and this Netty seemed to have. He was sure that she was religious and very good.
“You know,” said Netty, hastily, and ignoring his remark, “I am much interested in Poland. It is such a romantic country. People have done such great things, have they not, in Poland? I mean the nobles—and the poor peasants, too in their small way, I suppose?”
“The nobles have come to great grief in Poland—that is all,” replied Martin, with a short laugh.
“And it is so sad,” said Netty, with a shake of the head; “but I am sure it will all come right someday. Do you think so? I am sure you are interested in Poland—you and your sister and your father.”
“We are supposed to be,” admitted Martin. “But no one cares for Poland now, I am afraid. The rest of the world has other things to think of, and, in England and America, Poland is forgotten now—and her history, which is the saddest history of any nation in the world.”
“But I am sure you are wrong there,” said Netty, earnestly. “I know a great number of people who are sorry for the Poles and interested in them.”
“Are you?” asked Martin, looking down at her.
“Yes,” she replied, with downcast eyes. “Come,” she said, after a pause, with a sort of effort, “we must not stand in front of this shop any longer.”
“Especially,” he said, with a laugh, as he followed her, “as it is a Russian shop. Wherever you see tea and articles of religion mixed up in a window, that is a Russian shop, and if you sympathize with Poland you will not go into it. There are, on the other hand, plenty of shops in Warsaw where they will not serve Russians. It is to those shops that you must go.”
Netty looked at him doubtfully.
“I am quite serious,” he said. “We must fight with what weapons we have.”
“Yes,” she answered, indicating the shops, “these people, but not you. You are a prince, and they cannot touch you. They would not dare to take anything from you.”
“Because there is nothing to take,” laughed Martin, gayly; “we were ruined long ago. They took everything there was to take in , when my father was a boy. He could not work for his living, and I may not either; so I am a prince without a halfpenny to call his own.”
“I am so sorry!” she said, in a soft voice, and, indeed, she looked it.
Then she caught sight of Paul Deulin a long way off, despite her short sight, which was perhaps spasmodic, as short sight often is. She stopped, and half turned, as if to dismiss Martin. When Deulin perceived them he was standing in the middle of the pavement, as if they had just met. He came up with a bow to Netty and his hand stretched out to Martin—his left hand, which conveyed the fact that he was an old and familiar friend.
“I suppose you are on your way back to the Europe to lunch?” he said to Netty. “I am in luck. I have come just in time to walk back with you, if you will permit it.”
And he did not wait for permission, but walked on beside Netty, while Martin took off his hat and went in the opposite direction. It was not the way he wanted to go but something had made him think that Netty desired him to go, and he departed with a pleasant sensation as of a secret possessed in common with her. He walked back quickly to the flower-shop kept by Ulrich, in the Senatorska.
A rare thing happened to Paul Deulin at this moment. He fell into a train of thought, and walked some distance by the side of Netty without speaking. It was against his principles altogether. “Never
