Deulin help up one hand in a gesture imploring silence.

“Thin ice!” he said, warningly.

“Bah!” laughed the other.  “You and your thin ice!  I am no diplomatist—­a man who is afraid to look over a wall.”

“No.  Only a man who prefers to find out what is on the other side by less obvious means,” corrected the Frenchman.  “One must not be seen looking over one’s neighbor’s wall—­that is the first commandment of diplomacy.”

“Then why are you here?” asked the prince, abruptly, with his rough laugh.

And Paul Deulin suddenly lost his temper.  He sat bolt upright in his chair, and banged his two hands down on the arms of it so that the dust flew out.  He glared across at the prince with a fierceness in his eyes that had not glittered there for twenty years.

“You think I came here to pry into your affairs—­to turn our friendship into a means for my own aggrandizement?  You think that I report to my government that which you and I may say to each other, or leave unsaid, before your study fire?  Was it not I who cried ’Thin ice’?”

“Yes—­yes,” answered the prince, shortly.  And the two old friends glared at each other gleams of the fires that had burned fiercely enough in other days.  “Yes—­yes! but why are you here this morning?”

“Why am I here this morning?  I will tell you.  I ask you no questions, I want to know nothing of your schemes and plans.  You can run your neck into a noose if you like.  You have been doing it all your life.  And—­who knows?—­you may win at last.  As for Martin, you have brought him up in the same school.  And, bon Dieu!  I suppose you are Bukatys, and you cannot help it.  It is your affair, after all.  But you shall not push Wanda into a Russian prison!  You shall not get her to Siberia, if I can help it!”

“Wanda!” said the prince, in some surprise—­“Wanda!”

“Yes.  You forget—­you Bukatys always have forgotten—­the women.  Warsaw is no place for Wanda to-day.  And to-day’s work—­to-night’s work—­is no work for Wanda!”

“To-night’s work!  What do you mean?”

The prince sat forward and looked hard at his friend.

“Oh, you need not be alarmed.  I know nothing,” was the answer.  “But I am not a complete fool.  I put two and two together at random.  I only guess, as you know.  I have guessed all my life.  And as often as not I have guessed right, as you know.  Ah! you think I am interfering in that which is not my business, and I do not care a snap of the finger what you think!”

And he illustrated this indifference with a gesture of his finger and thumb.

The prince laughed suddenly and boisterously.

“If I did not know that you had broken your heart—­more than once—­long ago,” he began.  But Deulin interrupted him.

“Only once,” he put in, with a short, hard laugh.

“Well, only once, then.  I should say that you had fallen in love with Wanda.”