“We talk too intimately,” she whispered, as the people began to file in to take their places. “After luncheon we will take our coffee in my coupe. Then, if you like, we will speak of these matters. I have a headache. Will you order me some champagne? It is a terrible thing, I know, to drink wine in the morning, but when one travels, what can one do? Here come your bodyguard. They look at me as though I had stolen you away. Remember we take our coffee together afterwards. I am bored with so much traveling, and I look to you to amuse me.”
Von Behrling’s journey was, after all, marked with sharp contrasts. The kindness of the woman whom he adored was sufficient in itself to have transported him into a seventh heaven. On the other hand, he had trouble with his friends. Streuss drew him on one side at Ostend, and talked to him plainly.
“Von Behrling,” he said, “I speak to you on behalf of Kahn and myself. Wine and women and pleasure are good things. We two, we love them, perhaps, as you do, but there is a place and a time for them, and it is not now. Our mission is too serious.”
“Well, well!” Von Behrling exclaimed impatiently, “what is all this? What do I do wrong? What have you to say against me? If I talk with Mademoiselle Idiale, it is because it is the natural thing for me to do. Would you have us three—you and Kahn and myself—travel arm in arm and speak never a word to our fellow passengers? Would you have us proclaim to all the world that we are on a secret mission, carrying a secret document, to obtain which we have already committed a crime? These are old-fashioned methods, Streuss. It is better that we behave like ordinary mortals. You talk foolishly, Streuss!”
“It is you,” the older man declared, “who play the fool, and we will not have it! Mademoiselle Idiale is a Servian and a patriot. She is the friend, too, of Bellamy, the Englishman. She and he were together last night.”
“Bellamy is not even on the train,” Von Behrling protested. “He went north to Berlin. That itself is the proof that they know nothing. If he had had the merest suspicion, do you not think that he would have stayed with us?”
“Bellamy is very clever,” Streuss answered. “There are too many of us to deal with,—he knew that. Mademoiselle Idiale is clever, too. Remember that half the trouble in life has come about through false women.
“What is it that you want?” Von Behrling demanded.
“That you travel the rest of the way with us, and speak no more with Mademoiselle.”
Von Behrling drew himself up. After all, it was he who was noble; Streuss was little more than a policeman.