“Yes,” reluctantly. “Paul is so queer in these things. He will not let me talk of it. He prefers that we are taken for French people. Indeed, it is not I who desire to think too much of Russia. It is not a year since my father was killed in the riots, and two of my brothers were sent to Siberia.”
Bernadine was deeply interested.
“They were among the revolutionaries?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Yes,” she answered.
“And your husband?”
“He, too, was with them in sympathy. Secretly, too, I believe that he worked among them. Only he had to be careful. You see, his position at the college made it difficult.”
Bernadine looked into the woman’s eyes and he knew then that she was speaking the truth. This man was, indeed, a great master; he had kept her in ignorance!
“Always,” Bernadine said, a few minutes later, as he passed her tea, “I read with the deepest interest of the people’s movement in Russia. Tell me, what became eventually of their great leader—the wonderful Father Paul?”
She set down her cup untasted, and her blue eyes flashed with a fire which turned them almost to the color of steel.