"With all my heart," I answered. "But there is one question I had better ask you while I have the opportunity. I should be glad if you could tell me how long you are thinking of remaining in Prague. When I left England I had no intention of being away from London more than a fortnight, and I have now trespassed on your hospitality for upward of two months. If you are going west within the next week or so, and will let me travel with you, I shall be only too glad to do so, otherwise I fear I shall be compelled to bid you good-bye and return to England alone."
"You must not think of such a thing," he answered, this time throwing a sharp glance at me from his sunken eyes. "Neither Valerie nor I could get on without you. Besides, there is no need for you to worry. Now that this rumour is afloat I have no intention of remaining here any longer than I can help."
"To what rumour do you refer?" I inquired. "I have heard nothing."
"That is what it is to be in love," he replied. "You have not heard then that one of the most disastrous and terrible plagues of the last five hundred years has broken out on the shores of the Bosphorus, and is spreading with alarming rapidity through Turkey and the Balkan States."
"I have not heard a word about it," I said, and as I did so I was conscious of a vague feeling of terror in my heart, that fear for a woman's safety which comes some time or another to every man who loves. "Is it only newspaper talk, or is it really as serious as your words imply?"
"It is very serious," he answered. "See, here is a man with the evening paper. I will purchase one and read you the latest news."
He did so, and searched the columns for what he wanted. Though I was able to speak German, I was unable to read it; Pharos accordingly translated for me.
"The outbreak of the plague which has caused so much alarm in Turkey," he read, "is, we regret having to inform our readers, increasing instead of diminishing, and to-day fresh cases to the number of seven hundred and thirty-three, have been notified. For the twenty-four hours ending at noon the death-rate has equalled eighty per cent. of those attacked. The malady has now penetrated into Russia, and three deaths were registered as resulting from it in Moscow, two in Odessa, and one in Kiev yesterday. The medical experts are still unable to assign a definite name to it, but incline to the belief that it is of Asiatic origin, and will disappear with the break up of the present phenomenally hot weather."
"I do not like the look of it at all," he said when he had finished reading. "I have seen several of these outbreaks in my time, and I shall be very careful to keep well out of this one's reach."
"I agree with you," I answered, and then bade him good-bye and went upstairs to my room, more than ever convinced that it behooved me to get the woman I loved out of the place without loss of time.