He arrived on foot soon after nine o’clock.  He was going on to Warsaw on foot the same night, he announced, before the greetings were over.

“And you have had nothing to eat,” said Wanda, glancing at his spare, weather-beaten face.  He was the impersonation of hardness and activity; a man in excellent physical training, inured to cold and every hardship.  He had simply opened the front door and walked in, throwing his rough sheepskin coat aside in the outer hall.  The snow was on his boots nearly to the knee.  The ice hung from his mustache and glistened on his eyebrows.  He held his coarse blue handkerchief in his hand, and wiped his face from time to time as the ice melted.

“No,” he answered, “I have had nothing to eat.  But the servants do not know I am here.  I saw the lights in their windows at the other end of the house.  I would rather go hungry than let them know that I am here.”

“You will not go hungry from this house,” said the prince, with his rather fierce laugh.

“I will get you what you want,” said Wanda, lighting a candle.  “There are no servants, however, so you need not think of that.  There are only the farmer and his wife—­and my maid, who is English, and silent.”

So, before telling his news, Kosmaroff sat down and ate, while Wanda waited on him, and Prince Bukaty poured out wine for this rough man in the homespun clothing and heavy boots of the Vistula raftsman, who yet had the manner of a gentleman and that quiet air of self-possession in all societies which is not to be learned in schools nor yet acquired at any academy.

“When you have finished,” said Wanda, “you can talk of your affairs.  I shall leave you to yourselves.”

“Oh, there is not much to say,” answered Kosmaroff.  “I have done no good on my journey.  Things make no progress.”

“You expect too much,” said the prince.  He had helped himself to a glass of wine, and fingered the glass reflectively as he spoke.  “You expect the world to move more quickly than it can.  It is old and heavy, remember that.  I have a fellow-feeling for it, with my two sticks.  You would never make a diplomatist.  I have heard of negotiations going forward for five years, and then falling through, after all.”

Kosmaroff smiled, his odd, one-sided smile, and cut himself a piece of bread.  There was a faint suggestion of the river-side in his manner at table.  This was a man into whose life the ceremony of sit-down meals had never entered largely.  He ate because he was hungry—­not, as many do, to pass the time.

“One thing I came to tell you I can tell you now,” he said.  “In fact, it is better that the princess should hear it; for in a way it concerns her also.  But, please, do not stand,” he added, turning to her.  “I have all I want.  It is kind of you to wait on me as if I were a king—­or a beggar.”

His laugh had rather a cruel ring in it as he continued his meal.