“I think,” he said one morning to Steinmetz, “that I will write and tell Mrs. Sydney Bamborough all about this place.”

“I should not do that,” replied Steinmetz with a leisurely promptitude.

They were alone in a great smoking-room of which the walls were hung all round with hunting trophies.  Paul was smoking a post-prandial cigar.  Steinmetz reflected gravely over a pipe.  They were both reading Russian newspapers—­periodicals chiefly remarkable for that which they leave unsaid.

“Why not?” asked Paul.

“On principle.  Never tell a woman that which is not interesting enough to magnify into a secret.”

Paul turned over his newspaper.  He began reading again.  Then, suddenly, he looked up.

“We are engaged to be married,” he observed pointedly.

Steinmetz took his pipe from his lips slowly and imperturbably.  He was a man to whom it was no satisfaction to impart news.  He either knew it before or did not take much interest in the matter.

“That makes it worse,” he said.  “A woman only conceals what is bad about her husband.  If she knows anything that is likely to make other women think that their husbands are inferior, she will tell it.”

Paul laughed.

“But this is not good,” he argued.  “We have kept it so confoundedly quiet that I am beginning to feel as if it is a crime.”

Steinmetz uncrossed his legs, crossed them again, and then spoke after mature reflection: 

“As I understand the law of libel, a man is punished, not for telling a lie, but for telling either the truth or a lie with malicious intent.  I imagine the Almighty will take the intent into consideration, if human justice finds it expedient to do so!”

Paul shrugged his shoulders.  Argument was not his strong point, and, like most men who cannot argue, he was almost impervious to the arguments of others.  He recognized the necessity for secrecy—­the absolute need of a thousand little secretive precautions and disguises which were intensely disagreeable to him.  But he also grumbled at them freely, and whenever he made such objection Karl Steinmetz grew uneasy, as if the question which he disposed of with facile philosophy or humorous resignation had behind it a possibility and an importance of which he was fully aware.  It was on these rare occasions that he might have conveyed to a keen observer the impression that he was playing a very dangerous game with a smiling countenance.

“All that we do,” pursued Steinmetz, “is to bow to a lamentable necessity for deceit.  I have bowed to it all my life.  It has been my trade, perhaps.  It is not our fault that we are placed in charge of four or five thousand human beings who are no more capable of helping themselves than are sheep.  It is not our fault that the forefathers of these sheep cut down the forests and omitted to plant more, so that the flocks with whom we have to deal have no fuel.  It is not our fault that a