“And I cannot tell you what it is.”

“And I cannot guess.  I never find out things, and know nothing.  An ignorant Frenchman, you know, ignores more than any other man.”

“It came to Martin’s knowledge,” explained Wanda, looking at him across the table, with frank eyes.  But Deulin did not meet her eyes.  “Look a man in the eyes when you tell him a lie,” Deulin had once said to Cartoner, “but not a woman.”

“It came to Martin’s knowledge by chance, and he says that—­” Wanda paused, drew in her lips, and looked round the room in an odd, hurried way—­“that it is not safe for Mr. Cartoner to remain any longer in Warsaw, or even in Poland.  Mr. Cartoner was very kind to us in London.  We all like him.  Martin cannot, of course, say anything for him.  My father won’t—­”

Deulin was playing a gay little air with his fingers on the table.  His touch was staccato, and he appeared to be taking some pride in his execution.

“Years ago,” he said, after a pause, “I once took it upon myself to advise Cartoner.  He was quite a young man.  He listened to my advice with exemplary patience, and then acted in direct contradiction to it—­and never explained.  He is shockingly bad at explanation.  And he was right, and I was wrong.”

He finished his gay little air with an imaginary chord, played with both hands.

“Voila!” he said.  “I can do nothing, fair princess.”

“But surely you will not stand idle and watch a man throw away his life,” said Wanda, looking at him in surprise.

He raised his eyes to hers for a moment, and they were startlingly serious.  They were dark eyes, beneath gray lashes.  The whole man was neat and gray and—­shallow, as some thought.

“My dear Wanda,” he said, “for forty years and more I have watched men—­and women—­do worse than throw their lives away.  And it has quite ceased to affect my appetite.”

Wanda rose from her chair, and Deulin’s face changed again.  He shot a sidelong glance at her and bit his lip.  His eyes were keen enough now.

“Listen!” he said, as he followed her to the door.  “I will give him a little hint—­the merest ghost of a hint—­will that do?”

“Thank you,” said Wanda, going more slowly towards the door.

“Though I do not know why we should, any of us, trouble about this Englishman.”

Wanda quickened her pace a little, and made no answer.

“There are reasons why I should not accompany you,” said Deulin, opening the door.  “Try the right-hand staircase, and the other way round.”

He closed the door behind her, and stood looking at the chair which Wanda had just vacated.

“Only the third woman who knows what she wants,” he said, “and yet I have known thousands—­thousands.”

XVI

MUCH—­OR NOTHING