This was not a fashionable train, nor a through train to one of the capitals.  A religious fete at a village some miles out of Warsaw attracted the devout from all parts, and the devout are usually the humble in Roman Catholic countries.  Railways are still conducted in some parts of Europe on the prison system, and Cartoner, glancing into the third-class waiting room, saw that it was thronged.  The second-class room was a little emptier, and beyond it the sacred green-tinted shades of the first-class waiting-room promised solitude.  He went in alone.  There was one person in the bare room, who rose as he came in.  It was Wanda.  The gods were kind—­or cruel.

“You are going away?” she said, in a voice so unguardedly glad that Cartoner looked at her in surprise.  “You have seen Monsieur Deulin, and you are going away.”

“No, I have not seen Deulin since the races.  He came to my rooms yesterday, but I was out.  My rooms are watched, and he did not come again.”

“We are all watched,” said Wanda, with a short and careless laugh.  “But you are going away—­that is all that matters.”

“I am not going away.  I am only going across the frontier, and shall be back this afternoon.”

Wanda turned and looked towards the door.  They were alone in the room, which was a vast one.  If there were any other first-class passengers, they were waiting the arrival of the train from Lemberg in the restaurant, which is the more usual way of gaining access to the platform.  She probably guessed that he was going across the frontier to post a letter.

“You must leave Warsaw,” she said; “it is not safe for you to stay here.  You have by accident acquired some knowledge which renders it imperative for you to go away.  Your life, you understand, is in danger.”

She kept her eyes on the door as she spoke.  The ticket-collector on duty at the entrance of the two waiting-rooms was a long way off, and could not hear them even if he understood English, which was improbable.  There were so many other languages at this meeting-place of East and West which it was essential for him to comprehend.  The room was absolutely bare; not so much as a dog could be concealed in it.  It these two had anything to say to each other this was assuredly the moment, and this bare railway station the place to say it in.

Cartoner did not laugh at the mention of danger, or shrug his shoulders.  He was too familiar with it, perhaps, to accord it this conventional salutation.

“Martin would have warned you,” she went on, “but he did not dare to.  Besides, he thought that you knew something of the danger into which you had unwittingly run.”

“Not unwittingly,” said Cartoner, and Wanda turned to look at him.  He said so little that his meaning needed careful search.

“I cannot tell you much—­” she began, and he interrupted her at once.

“Stop,” he said, “you must tell me nothing.  It was not unwitting.  I am here for a purpose.  I am here to learn everything—­but not from you.”