Paul was still looking at him.  Steinmetz looked up slowly, and saw that he had grown ten years older in the last few minutes.  He did not look at him for more than a second, because the sight of Paul’s face hurt him.  But he saw in that moment that Paul did not understand.  This strong man, hard in his youthful strength of limb and purpose, would be just, but nothing more.  And between man and man it is not always justice that is required.  Between man and woman justice rarely meets the difficulty.

“Comprendre c’est pardonner,” quoted Steinmetz vaguely.

He hesitated to interfere between Paul and his wife.  Axioms are made for crucial moments.  A man’s life has been steered by a proverb before this.  Some, who have no religion, steer by them all the voyage.

Paul walked slowly to the chair he usually occupied, opposite to Steinmetz, at the writing-table.  He walked and sat down as if he had travelled a long distance.

“What is to be done?” asked Steinmetz.

“I do not know.  I do not think that it matters much.  What do you recommend?”

“There is so much to be done,” answered Steinmetz, “that it is difficult to know what to do first.  We must not forget that De Chauxville is furious.  He will do all the harm of which he is capable at once.  We must not forget that the country is in a state of smoldering revolt, and that we have two women, two English ladies, entrusted to our care.”

Paul moved uneasily in his chair.  His companion had struck the right note.  This large man was happiest when he was tiring himself out.

“Yes; but about Etta?” he said.

And the sound of his voice made Steinmetz wince.  There is nothing so heartrending as the sight of dumb suffering.

“You must see her,” answered he reflectively.  “You must see her, of course.  She may be able to explain.”

He looked across the table beneath his shaggy gray eyebrows.  Paul did not at that moment look a likely subject for explanations—­even the explanations of a beautiful woman.  But there was one human quantity which in all his experience Karl Steinmetz had never successfully gauged—­namely, the extent of a woman’s power over the man who loves, or at one time has loved her.

“She cannot explain away Stepan Lanovitch’s ruined life.  She can hardly explain away a thousand deaths from unnatural causes every winter, in this province alone.”

This was what Steinmetz dreaded—­justice.

“Give her the opportunity,” he said.

Paul was looking out of the window.  His singularly firm mouth was still and quiet—­not a mouth for explanations.

“I will, if you like,” he said.

“I do like, Paul.  I beg of you to do it.  And remember that—­she is not a man.”

This, like other appeals of the same nature, fell on stony ground.  Paul simply did not understand it.  In all the years of his work among the peasants it is possible that some well-spring of conventional charity had been dried up—­scorched in the glare of burning injustice.  He was not at this moment in a mood to consider the only excuse that Steinmetz seemed to be able to urge.