“While she was engaged in this discouraging pastime the door was opened, and a maid came in with the air of one who has gained a trifling advantage by the simple method of peeping.

“It is M. Steinmetz, Mme. la Comtesse.”

“Ah!  Do I look horrible, Celestine?  I have been asleep.”

Celestine was French, and laughed with all the charm of that tactful nation.

“How can Mme. la Comtesse ask such a thing?  Madame might be thirty-five!”

It is to be supposed that the staff of angelic recorders have a separate set of ledgers for French people, with special discounts attaching to pleasant lies.

Madame shook her head—­and believed.

“M.  Steinmetz is even now taking off his furs in the hall,” said Celestine, retiring toward the door.

“It is well.  We shall want tea.”

Steinmetz came into the room with an exaggerated bow and a twinkle in his melancholy eyes.

“Figure to yourself, my dear Steinmetz,” said the countess vivaciously.  “Catrina has gone out—­on a day like this!  Mon Dieu!  How gray, how melancholy!”

“Without, yes!  But here, how different!” replied Steinmetz in French.

The countess cackled and pointed to a chair.

“Ah! you always flatter.  What news have you, bad character?”

Steinmetz smiled pensively, not so much suggesting the desire to impart as the intention to withhold that which the lady called news.

“I came for yours, countess.  You are always amusing—­as well as beautiful,” he added, with his mouth well controlled beneath the heavy mustache.

The countess shook her head playfully, which had the effect of tilting her cap to one side.

“I!  Oh, I have nothing to tell you.  I am a nun.  What can one do—­what can one hear in Petersburg?  Now in Paris it is different.  But Catrina is so firm.  Have you ever noticed that, Steinmetz?  Catrina’s firmness, I mean.  She wills a thing, and her will is like a rock.  The thing has to be done.  It does itself.  It comes to pass.  Some people are so.  Now I, my clear Steinmetz, only desire peace and quiet.  So I give in.  I gave in to poor Stepan.  And now he is exiled.  Perhaps if I had been firm—­if I had forbidden all this nonsense about charity—­it would have been different.  And Stepan would have been quietly at home instead of in Tomsk, is it, or Tobolsk?  I always forget which.  Well, Catrina says we must live in Petersburg this winter, and—­nous voila!”

Steinmetz shrugged his shoulders with a commiserating smile.  He took the countess’s troubles indifferently, as do the rest of us when our neighbor’s burden does not drag upon our own shoulders.  It suited him that Catrina should be in Petersburg, and it is to be feared that the feelings of the Countess Lanovitch had no weight as against the convenience of Karl Steinmetz.

“Ah, well!” he said, “you must console yourself with the thought that Petersburg is the brighter for some of us.  Who is this—­another visitor?”