“No,” calmly replied the Russian, very pale, but still smiling, “it is not a folly.”

“But it is a danger?” queried Menko.

Labanoff made no reply.

“I do not know either,” said Michel, “how my affair will end.  But, since chance has brought us together today, face to face—­”

“It was not chance, but my own firm resolution to see you again before my departure.”

“I know what your friendship for me is, and it is for that reason that I ask you to tell me frankly where you will be in a month.”

“In a month?” repeated Labanoff.

“Give me the route you are going to take?  Shall you be a fixture at St. Petersburg?”

“Not immediately,” responded the Russian, slowly, his gaze riveted upon Menko.  “In a month I shall still be at Warsaw.  At St. Petersburg the month after.”

“Thanks.  I only ask you to let me know, in some way, where you are.”

“Why?”

“Because, I should like to join you.”

“You!”

“It is only a fancy,” said Menko, with an attempt at a laugh.  “I am bored with life—­you know it; I find it a nuisance.  If we did not spur it like an old, musty horse, it would give us the same idiotic round of days.  I do not know—­I do not wish to know—­why you are going to Russia, and what this final farewell of which you have just spoken signifies; I simply guess that you are off on some adventure, and it is possible that I may ask you to allow me to share it.”

“Why?” said Labanoff, coldly.  “You are not a Russian.”

Menko smiled, and, placing his hands upon the thin shoulders of his friend, he said: 

“Those words reveal many things.  It is well that they were not said before an agent of police.”

“Yes,” responded Labanoff, firmly.  “But I am not in the habit of recklessly uttering my thoughts; I know that I am speaking now to Count Menko.”

“And Count Menko will be delighted, my dear Labanoff, if you will let him know where, in Poland or Russia, he must go, soon, to obtain news of you.  Fear nothing:  neither there nor here will I question you.  But I shall be curious to know what has become of you, and you know that I have enough friendship for you to be uneasy about you.  Besides, I long to be on the move; Paris, London, the world, in short, bores me, bores me, bores me!”

“The fact is, it is stupid, egotistical and cowardly,” responded Labanoff.

He again held out to Menko his nervous hand, burning, like his blue eyes, with fever.

“Farewell!” he said.

“No, no, ’au revoir’!”

“‘Au revoir’ be it then.  I will let you know what has become of me.”

“And where you are?”

“And where I am.”

“And do not be astonished if I join you some fine morning.”

“Nothing ever astonishes me,” said the Russian.  “Nothing!”

And in that word nothing were expressed profound disgust with life and fierce contempt of death.