“Why not, indeed?” replied De Chauxville.  “It is no affair of mine.  A wise man reduces his affairs to a minimum, and his interest in the affairs of his neighbor to less.  But I thought it would interest you.”

“Thanks.”

The tone of the big man in the arm-chair was not dry.  Karl Steinmetz knew better than to indulge in that pastime.  Dryness is apt to parch the fount of expansiveness.

De Chauxville’s attention was apparently caught by an illustration in a weekly paper lying open on the table near to him.  Your shifty man likes something to look at.  He did not speak for some moments.  Then he threw the paper aside.

“Who was Sydney Bamborough, at any rate?” he asked, with a careless assumption of a slanginess which is affected by society in its decadent periods.

“So far as I remember,” answered Steinmetz, “he was something in the Diplomatic Service.”

“Yes, but what?”

“My dear friend, you had better ask his widow when next you sit beside her at dinner.”

“How do you know that I sat beside her at dinner?”

“I did not know it,” replied Steinmetz, with a quiet smile which left De Chauxville in doubt as to whether he was very stupid or exceedingly clever.

“She seems to be very well off,” said the Frenchman.

“I am glad, as she is going to marry my master.”

De Chauxville laughed almost awkwardly, and for a fraction of a second he changed countenance under Steinmetz’s quiet eyes.

“One can never know whom a woman intends to marry,” said he carelessly, “even if they can themselves, which I doubt.  But I do not understand how it is that she is so much better off, or appears to be, since the death of her husband.”

“Ah, she is much better off, or appears to be, since the death of her husband,” said the stout man, in his slow Germanic way.

“Yes.”

De Chauxville rose, stretched himself and yawned.  Men are not always, be it understood, on their best behavior at their club.

“Good-night,” he said shortly.

“Good-night, my very dear friend.”

After the Frenchman had left, Karl Steinmetz remained quite motionless and expressionless in his chair, until such time as he concluded that De Chauxville was tired of watching him through the glass door.  Then he slowly sat forward in his chair and looked back over his shoulder.

“Our friend,” he muttered, “is afraid that Paul is going to marry this woman.  Now, I wonder why?”

These two had met before in a past which has little or nothing to do with the present narrative.  They had disliked each other with a completeness partly bred of racial hatred, partly the outcome of diverse interests.  But of late years they had drifted apart.  There was no reason why the friendship, such as it was, should not have lapsed into a mere bowing acquaintance.  For these men were foreigners, understanding fully the value of the bow as an interchange of masculine courtesy.  Englishmen bow badly.