"I am on the road, but did not affairs of vital importance occupy me at the moment I might be capable of ancient excess!"
"It is as well for the head of the Ardayre family that you are occupied then!" and Denzil smiled, and then he said, his thoughts drifting back to what interested him most:
"You think Europe will be blazing soon, Stépan? I have wondered myself in the last month if this hectic peace could continue."
"It cannot. I am here upon business with great issues, but I must not speak of facts, and what I say now is not from my knowledge of current events, but from my study of etheric currents which the thoughts and actions of over-civilised generations have engendered. You do not cram a shell with high explosives and leave it among matches with impunity."
The two men looked at one another significantly, and then Denzil said:
"I think I will not retire from the old regiment yet—I shall wait another year."
"Yes—I would if I were you."
They smoked silently for a moment—Verisschenzko's Calmuck face fixed and inscrutable and Denzil's debonnaire English one usually grave.
"Some one told me that your friend, Madame Boleski, was having a tremendous success in London. I wish I could have got leave, I should like to have seen the whole thing."
"Harietta is enjoying her luck-moment; she is in her zenith. She has baffled me as to where she receives her information from—she is capable of betraying both sides to gain some material, and possibly trivial, end. She is worth studying if you do come up, for she is unique. Most criminals have some stable point in immorality; Harietta is troubled by nothing fixed, no law of God or man means anything to her, she is only ruled by her sense of self-preservation. Her career is picturesque."