“It was a near thing,” he said to himself in Russian, which language he had learned before any other, so that he still thought in it.  “And I found the only way out of that hideous danger.”

As he thus reflected he was putting together hastily the contents of Joseph Mangles’s writing-case, which were spread all over the table in confusion.  Then he hurried into the bedroom, closed one or two drawers which he had left open, put the despatch-case where he had found it, and, with a few deft touches, set the apartment in order.  A moment later he lounged out at the great doorway, dangling the tradesman’s box on his arm.

It was a fine moonlight night, and the gardens were peopled by shadows moving hither and thither beneath the trees.  The shadows were mostly in couples.  Others had come on the same errand as Kosmaroff—­for a better motive, perhaps, or a worse.  It was the very end of St. Martin’s brief summer, and when winter lays its quiet mantle on these northern plains lovers must needs seek their opportunities in-doors.

Kosmaroff arrived first, and sat down thoughtfully on a bench.  He was one of the few who were not muffled in great-coats and wraps against the autumn chill.  He had known a greater cold than Poland ever felt.

“I suppose she will come,” he said in his mind, watching the gate through which Netty must enter the gardens.  “It matters little if she does not.  For I do not know what I shall say when she does come.  Must leave that to the inspiration of the moment—­and the moonlight.  She is pretty enough to make it easy.”

In a few moments Netty passed through the gate and came towards him—­not hurriedly or furtively, as some maiden in a book to her first clandestine meeting—­but with her head thrown back, and with an air of having business to transact, which was infinitely safer and less likely to attract the attention of the idle.  It was she who spoke first.

“I am going back at once,” she said.  “It was very wrong to come.  But you frightened me so.  Was it very wrong?  Do you think it was wrong of me to come, and despise me for it?”

“You promised,” he whispered, eagerly; “you promised me five minutes.  Out of a whole lifetime, what is it?  For I am going away from Warsaw soon, and I shall never see you again perhaps, and shall have only the memory of these five minutes to last me all my life—­these five minutes and that minute—­that one minute in the hotel.”

And he took her hand, which was quite near to him, somehow, on the stone bench, and raised it to his lips.

“We are going away, too,” she said.  She was thinking also of that one minute in the doorway of the salon, when she had touched high-water mark.  “We are on our way to St. Petersburg, and are only waiting here till my uncle has finished some business affairs on which he is engaged.”

“But he is not a business man,” said Kosmaroff, suddenly interested.  “What is he doing here?”