“The man who goes by the name of Kosmaroff is a gentleman, according to his lights,” interrupted Cartoner.

“Ah! since you say so,” returned Deulin, with a significant gesture, “yes.”

“Bon sang,” said Cartoner, and did not trouble to complete the saying.  “He is too much of a gentleman to herd with the extremists.”

But Deulin did not seem to be listening.  He was following his own train of thought.

“So you know of Kosmaroff?” he said, studying his companion’s face.  “You know that, too.  What a lot you know behind that dull physiognomy.  Where is Kosmaroff?  Perhaps you know that.”

“In Warsaw,” guessed Cartoner.

“Wrong.  He has gone towards Berlin—­towards London, by the same token.”

Deulin leaned across the table and tapped the symbol that he had drawn on the margin of the newspaper, daintily, with his finger-nail.

“That parishioner is in London, too,” he said, in his own tongue—­and the word means more in French.

Cartoner slowly tore the margin from the newspaper and reduced the drawing to small pieces.  Then he glanced at the clock.

“Trying to get me out of Warsaw,” he said.  “Giving me a graceful chance of showing the white feather.”

Deulin smiled.  He had seen the glance, and he was quicker than most at guessing that which might be passing in another man’s mind.  The force of habit is so strong that few even think of a train without noting the time of day at the same moment.  If Cartoner was thinking of a train at that instant, it could only be the train to Berlin on the heels of Kosmaroff, and Deulin desired to get Cartoner away from Warsaw.

“The white feather,” he said, “is an emblem that neither you nor I need trouble our minds about.  Don’t get narrow-minded, Cartoner.  It is a national fault, remember.  For an Englishman, you used to be singularly independent of the opinion of the man in the street or the woman at the tea-table.  Afraid!  What does it matter who thinks we are afraid?”

And he gave a sudden staccato laugh which had a subtle ring in it of envy, or of that heaviness which is of a life that is waxing old.

“Look here,” he said, after a pause, and he made a little diagram on the table, “here is a bonfire, all dry and crackling—­here, in Warsaw.  Here—­in Berlin or in London—­is the man with the match that will set it alight.  You and I have happened on a great event, and stand in the shadow that it casts before it, for the second—­no, for the third time in our lives.  We work together again, I suppose.  We have always done so when it was possible.  One must watch the dry wood, the other must know the movements of the man with the kindling.  Take your choice, since your humor is so odd.  You stay or you go—­but remember that it is in the interests of others that you go.”

“Of others?”

“Yes—­of the Bukatys.  Your presence here is a danger to them.  Now go or stay, as you like.”