“Cartoner and I,” Prince Martin hastened to explain, “travelled from Berlin together, and we agreed then that, much as we might desire it, it would be inconvenient for me to show him that attention which one would naturally want to show to an Englishman travelling in Poland.  That is why he went the other way when he saw you.”

Wanda looked at Cartoner with her quick, shrewd smile.  It would have been the obvious thing to have confirmed this explanation.  But Cartoner kept silent.  He had acquired, it seemed, the fatal habit—­very rare among men and almost unknown in women—­of thinking before he spoke.  Which habit is deadly for that which is called conversation, because if one decides not to give speech to the obvious and the unnecessary and the futile there is in daily intercourse hardly anything left.

“You see,” said Martin, who always had plenty to say for himself, “in this province of Russia we are not even allowed to choose our own friends.”

“Even in a free country one does not pick one’s friends out, like the best strawberries from a basket,” said Wanda.

“Not a question to be arranged beforehand,” put in Cartoner.

“Not even by the governor-general of Poland?” asked Wanda, looking thoughtfully at the falling leaves which a sudden gust of wind had showered round them.

“Not even by the Czar.”

“Who, I am told, means well!” said Martin, ironically, and with a gay laugh, for irony and laughter may be assimilated by the young.  “Poor man!  It must be terrible to know that people are saying behind one’s back that one means well!  I hope no one will ever say that of me.”

Wanda had sat down again, and was stirring the dead leaves with her walking-stick.

“Martin and I are going for a tramp,” she said.  “We like to get away from the noise and the dust—­and the uniforms.”

But Martin sat down beside her and made room for Cartoner.

“We attract less attention than if we stand,” he explained.  And Cartoner took the seat offered.  “Such hospitality as our circumstances allow us to offer you,” commented the young prince, gayly, “a clean stone seat on the sunny side of a public garden.”

“But let us understand each other,” put in Wanda, in her practical way, and looked from one man to the other with those gay, blue eyes that saw so much, “since we are conspirators.”

“The better we understand each other the better conspirators we shall be,” said Cartoner.

“I notice you don’t ask, ‘What is the plot?’” said Wanda.

“The plot is simple enough,” answered Martin, for Cartoner said nothing, and looked straight in front of him.  He did not address one more than the other, but explained the situation, as it were, for the benefit of all whom it might concern.  He had lighted a cigarette—­a little Russian affair, all gold lettering and mouthpiece, and as he spoke he jerked the ash from time to time so that it should not fly and incommode his sister.