Paul Deulin was considered by his friends to be a cynic; and a French cynic is not without cruelty.  He once told Wanda that he had seen men and women do much worse than throw their lives away, which was probably the unvarnished truth.  But there must have been a weak spot in his cynicism.  There always is a weak spot in the vice of the most vicious.  For he sat alone in his room at the Hotel de l’Europe, at Warsaw, long into the night, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and thinking thoughts which he would at any other juncture have been the first to condemn.  He was thinking of the affairs of others, and into his thoughts there came, moreover, the affairs, not of individuals, but of nations.  A fellow-countryman once gave it as his opinion that so long as the trains ran punctually and meals were served at regular intervals he could perceive no difference between one form of government and another.  And in the majority of instances the fate of nations rarely affects the lives of individuals.

Deulin, however, was suddenly made aware of his own ignorance of affairs that were progressing in his immediate vicinity, and which were affecting the lives of those around him.  More than any other do Frenchmen herd together in exile, and Deulin knew all his fellow-countrymen and women in Warsaw, in whatsoever station of life they happened to move.  He had a friend behind the counter of the small feather-cleaning shop in the Jerozolimska.  This lady was a French Jewess, who had by some undercurrent of Judaism drifted from Paris to Warsaw again and found herself once more among her own people.  The western world is ignorant of the strength of Jewry in Poland.

Deulin made a transparent excuse for his visit to the cleaner’s shop.  He took with him two or three pairs of those lavender gloves which Englishmen have happily ceased to wear by day.

“One likes,” he said to the stout Jewess, “to talk one’s own tongue in a foreign land.”

And he sat down quite affably on the hither side of the counter.  Conversation ran smoothly enough between these two, and an hour slipped past before Deulin quitted the little shop.  It was still early in the day, and he hurried to Cartoner’s rooms in the Jasna.  He bought a flower at the corner of the Jerozolimska as he went along, and placed it in his buttonhole.  He wore his soft felt hat at a gay angle, and walked the pavement at a pace and with an air belonging to a younger generation.

“Ah!” he cried, at the sight of Cartoner, pipe in mouth, at his writing-table.  “Ah! if you were only idle, as I am”—­he paused, with a sharp, little sigh—­“if you only could be idle, how much happier you would be!”

“A Frenchman,” replied Cartoner, without looking up, “thinks that noise means happiness.”

“Then you are happy—­you pretend to happiness?” inquired Deulin, sitting down without being invited to do so, and drawing towards him a cigarette-case that lay upon the table.